GRAY SKIES

So it's overcast here in Lost Angeles and no one is moving. The streets are empty. The pools are quiet. The early matinees might as well go back to bed. Nobody's gonna show up for anything before 3, and then only if they have friends visiting from out of town.

Your people from other cities with more conventional climates - you know, rain, snow, hail, hurricane - they laugh at us. But think about it. Bad weather is all low pressure systems, right? Imagine your human is like a barometer and when the mercury drops, so does the circulation. See what I'm getting at? Less blood to the brain, and more sluggish. Low pressure, low spirits. High pressure, high spirits.

This is why people who want to feel good go to the beach. Down at sea level, the pressure is heavier and the blood zips around and you feel younger than springtime and clearer about everything. Opposite-wise, your people seeking the oxygen-deprived illusion of enlightenment go to the mountains to get away from it all, "it all" being the functioning of their brains.

This has ramifications beyond mere mood. Just look at the stores. Shopping is the greatest expression of optimism and satisfaction with life that I know. Compare how many shops and boutiques and stands and stalls and malls there are at the beach compared with the mountaintops, and you get my point.

So LA, with its normally blue sky high, is just about as optimistic and rich a town as you could hope for. Bad stuff don't seem real, even when it's happening to you. This is why people here pull the covers around their ears on gray days. Not because they're afraid of the clouds of rain, but because they're afraid of the clouds of doubt.

Next time some politician wants to get some work done, don't gather people at a 'summit.' Get them together at a 'beach.' In bathing suits, sandals and big sun hats, against the relentless obliviousness of the ocean, the zippy state of their blood racing to the brain with extra oxygen will guarantee something lovely happening.