‘When Hemingway put his brains on the wall, that was style’ - Gazzara

Not many people read Hemingway these days. It seems he endured a bad patch of sledging sometime towards the end of the last Millennium when the critics decided to lay into, the long since deceased, American Author. I do still read his books as I really get an incredibly vivid surge to my imagination of the places and people he is writing about. More about the places than the people though. From Paris to the Florida and the African bush he had an incredible talent to make it live in my head in a fantastic form of reality. His characters were not as attractive to me. I am not a fan of his 'manliness'. The dude was a huge hunter and bull fight enthusiast and I suppose this is how his male characters are portrayed.
He had an eventful time on the planet until he leaned up against a shotgun that he wedged between the skirting board of his house and his kakebeen (a beautiful Afrikaans word for Jawbone) and pulled the trigger. On purpose you understand ... to kill himself. To commit sewage pipes - suicide. Unlike a one of his beloved Matadors who just slice those sword blades into the bulging shoulders of a hapless bull by the dozen with no chance of missing the dying target - old Hemmers missed and only partially blew his head off. Obviously he died later on, but I am not sure if it is then actually officially called suicide as he missed the main shot see.

The reason I have been thinking about suicide ... hang on, hang on. Not thinking of testing it out I can assure you (although the sound of those f$%^&#g sheep skin slippers dragging along our oak floors is driving me as close as I have probably ever been), but rather thinking about the particular fact that has come to me a few times in the last few weeks. And that is that the weather actually has an effect on a persons decision to kill themselves. I am not talking about extreme weather conditions, where the option of falling on your bread knife rather than die at the hands of frostbite or putting a bullet in your brain while drowning to escape that uncomfortable situation. I am talking about persistent but totally durable weather conditions leading to the fatal decisions.
What got me to thinking in this (weather) vein is the incessant complaining by my fellow Capetonians about the huge amounts of rain we have had this winter and: "oh my goodness when will it all stop" and "It's already October and where is the summer" and on and on and on. Stop the whinging already. The rain is incredible! The more we have this winter the better. So have another warm coffee or even better a good full glass of shut the fuck up and enjoy the life giving drops from the sky. Summer is summer and it is on its way ... just for the same fools to start moaning about the South Eater wind. Haaaa haaa! Forgot about that little fella that comes to visit with Mr Summer didn't you?
Well even for you whinging bastards there is good news about the rain. The suicide rate does go up with weather conditions (what are we ... pillars of salt? Blocks of butter?) but it seems it is more the hot weather that puts the fear into us and not so much the rain. As per CSI last night and more research I have done since, the surge in hot weather causes higher levels of street violence and attacks, as well as rioting and unrest + Suicides.

So enjoy the rain.

Here are 10 weather phobias the Scientists and there psyhcologically minded buddies have put together to officially show how screwed we are when it comes to being anti weather and not actually intelligent enough to enjoy it (I have added some of my own so see if you can spot the PlanetPi contrived phobias).

10 Weather Phobias

• Brontophobia - Fear of thunder
• Astrapophobia - Fear of lightning
• Anemophobia - Fear of wind
• Chionophobia - Fear of snow
• WetTshirtophobia - Fear of water wetting white shirt
  
• Cryophobia - Fear of ice and frost
• Asterixophobia - Fear of sky falling on head
  
• Heliophobia - Fear of the Sun and light
• Frizzophobia - Fear of hair going curly
  
• Homichlophobia - Fear of fog
• Nephelophobia - Fear of clouds
• Ombrophobia - Fear of rain
• Psychrophobia - Fear of cold

post script: drowning as used above as a weather condition leading to suicide IS totally acceptable as its caused by water ... so shut it!