This was very poorly executed piece. To pull something like this off, it needs to be funny, ironic, satiric, or in some way clever (think of how Woody Allen might have approached this). I hate winter as much as she hates summer but even if she had written about winter this way, I just couldn’t get behind it. This feels like something she needs to tell her therapist. Or maybe she should write to Cary Tennis for some helpful advice? Someone this miserable clearly needs some help. In fact my first instinct was to write to advise her and then I realized that, oh yeah this was just a personal interest piece, not a desperate call for help. Or is it…

Dear LW,

I’d like to sympathize with how you are feeling, but it almost feels as if you are reveling in your misery. Why would you not have an air conditioner? Why have you not sought out solutions for your large breast issue? Could it be that you have some romantic notion that a writer (in NYC no less!!!) should be miserable? I assure you that a writer need not stew in her own sweat to become successful. Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Go on line and get a good bra from a site that specializes in large breasts.

2. Buy an ac unit to put in your window.

3. Take a shower.

4. Put some talc under those behemoth breasts!

5. Put on your new bra.

6. Turn on your new ac.

7. Turn off the soaps.

8. Go to your computer and write something good, funny, clever, what ever.

Now doesn’t that feel better?

I can envision you. I want to run away. The light around me dims when your letter appears. Holy Christ. Somehow I think that a breast reduction would simply leave you with chronic pain issues, and anti-depressants would leave you with unacceptable side effects, and a geographical transplant would be just the same sickly plant in different soil, and a coach/psychiatrist would simply be another loutish boor who would first mock you and offer pithy truisms before extorting your hard earned wages. Your self-loathing is um, catching.

I hope the letter is cathartic for you, though. We all have experienced feelings of alienation and social awkwardness that perpetuate beyond the pageant of adolescence. The sliver of resiliant defiance you find among the shards of your squalid self-tribute -- may you find the courage to stab your Shelob - and may a new tree of hope and stregnth root and tower from it.

Or whatever.

...I'm lookin' forward to reading why your hate winter, spring and autumn too. Each season has its discrete charms and we never tire of reading them inverted.

Here in Dallas, we'll get four or five days of Dixie weather (97 degrees, 80 percent humidity, still, still air)followed by four or five days of desert weather (101 degrees at a bare minimum, 25 percent humidity, dry oven-blast breezes). The former is intolerable, the latter quite pleasant if you stay in the shade, remain half-drunk in all moments of leisure, and give up your dream of working on a road crew.

Having been in NYC in June/July, I can honestly say it's intolerably miserable -- this coming from a Texan. I'm originally from Baltimore, and the whole East Coast is miserable in the summer. I'd honestly rather be here than, say, Virginia or New Jersey. Never been to Nebraska.

Thanks!

I was amused.

Rachel, your article sounded like a lovely late-spring afternoon here. If only my thighs would stick to the plastic chairs just once! Oh to have the plastic chairs unmelted and cool enough to even touch in mid-July!

Cry me a river, sister. Your kvetching falls on deaf ears here. Just about everyone except the criminally insane hates the summer in Austin. Air Conditioning and Barton Springs Pool is the only thing that keeps us from butchering enough other in a fit of heat-stroke induced delirium.

This is the second essay I've read by her on Salon. And they were both clever and well-written. Both times, though, the reader response comments bordered on idiocy.

I suggest that Salon never publish a David Sedaris story, or these same pundits will probably burn down your offices.

These people are as humorless as the Taliban.

Are the commenters really upset about how Shukert feels about summertime heat? And how she feels about her boobs? And grilled hot dogs?

Because the story wasn't about that. Or to put it in terms they'll better understand, The Lord of the Rings isn't about midgets and wizards and a golden ring.

Rachel Shukert, keep on keepin' on... Today you've convinced me to buy your book. As long as there is no reader response section at the end of it.

Maybe if she wasn't such a bitter, overly serious, miserable person, she might have some friends that would call her and invite her to some parties in the summer. It's not only the people who have "made it" that manage to have friends and enjoy themselves.

Is Salon about ready to publish "Puppies and Kittens and Babies are the Devil's Fucking Spawn" yet?

You can't buy an air conditioner yourself? Under $100!

Maybe you could write an article complaining about the cheap bastard, that might net you $67.

The woman can write a sentence like

"from the time I hit puberty, even a simple tank top made me look like a deranged prostitute from a Fellini movie, the kind who will willingly smother the faces of the local boys in her tremendous mammaries for a cigarette and a pound of grapes"

and you people think this isn't funny?

I adore summer, hate self-pity, and am totally flat-chested-- and this piece made me laugh out loud. Thank you, Ms. Shukert, and hang in there until September.

When I want to complain about a meal - I think about how tough it had to be to eat, saaay, 1200 years ago.

When I want to complain about no AC - I think that that's how it was for the previous 100,000 years of human existence. (don't nitpick on that number, just realize that AC hasn't been around very long - but people have).

When I want to complain about my apartment - I think about living in a cave.

When I want to complain about the other people having fun - I think I should probably call a psychiatrist.

When I want to complain about the summer camps of my childhood - I remember I was never lucky enough to go to one.

I live in Manhattan and I'm a big boy. I sweat and I feel alive. When I smell the garbage on the streets when it's 95 degrees, I think about the third world, and I'm thankful to be an American.

When I feel like I'm trapped in my dingy, poorly ventilated apartment, unable to move, I move.

When I want to move to a different city and live the life I was promised by the sitcoms of my childhood, I realize no one promised me anything. Other than death and taxes.

Our society has no backbone. It's sad. Have a nice summer.

Go volunteer somewhere near the equator.