Well, it’s hot. Today was 111 and for the next three days (and the previous week) it’s been well over 100 every day. Thank goodness it moves down to a mere 97 on Monday and then down to the relatively cool high 80s to low 90s after that.
The heat has me thinking about cool things, and with humans, the important things are usually something to do with food.
Ice cream, in this case. So, a few fun facts about ice cream.
The third Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day. Just a couple weeks ago – I missed it!
Like a lot of other neat things, ice cream-like dessert seems to have started in China.
And of course, so many kinds of Phish Food from Ben and Jerry’s. It’s quite an impressive array of container designs and even flavors. And they’ve been doing it for 25 years.
BUT.
In the end, what this blog is really about is not only food based ice cream. Specifically, I’m thinking of an ice cream suit.
I was thinking about about Ray Bradbury, who wrote “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”, among other things. The suit has very little to do with the real meaning of the story, in fact, it’s basically a confirmation that clothes don’t make the man, that the man (or woman) make the clothes look good.
Bradbury had a way of writing these little short, haunting stories. I doubt anyone who read “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and isn’t forever scarred by the visual, the feeling, of fingernails drawing blood from the ringmaster’s palm probably has very little imagination. Things like “A Medicine for Melancholy” and “Dark They Were and Golden Eyed”. So many stories, such genius. And me, the aspiring author, knows I’ll never approach the mastery of Bradbury.
One final tiny bit of ice cream stuff.
My character Jean has an obsession. She’s a computer intelligence who wants to be able to know what gelato (and other food flavors) really taste like. The frustration she has comes from the fact that no computer can really ‘taste’ foods like a human can. So, she’ll show up from time to time in the various books that she’s in, or will be in, and the subject will come up. Gelato – who knew?
For the record, I’m not even a real fan of gelato. So there!