The Suckiness of Presenting False Choices

I'm ready to declare the summer of 2011 in Bend over. It started July 2 and ended July 11. The temperature hasn't made it into the 70s since then, and as I write this (12:45 p.m., July 14) it's mostly cloudy and 64 degrees.

But that's not what's really annoying me right now. What's annoying me are the imbeciles -- and they are many -- who, when you complain about the profoundly and chronically sucky spring and summer we've had, retort with: "Would you rather have it be 105 degrees like it is in Oklahoma?" or wherever.

Yes, triple-digit heat -- especially when it's prolonged and accompanied by drought, as it is in much of the southern tier of the United States this year -- can truly suck. It destroys crops and can kill old people who don't have air conditioning (and younger people who are stupid enough to work out in it).

But the suckiness of weather conditions elsewhere has no bearing whatsoever on the suckiness of weather conditions in Bend, Oregon. The fact that it may suck harder someplace else does not make it suck any less here.

So comments like, "Would you rather have it be 105 degrees?" are just moronic. It's as if somebody told you he had a compound fracture of the femur and you replied: "Would you rather have metastatic colon cancer?"

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. And rather douche-baggish, frankly.