A guy in Florida is thrown in jail for threatening to assassinate Obama. It's hot in Florida right now. The summer there is brutal. I'm not sure what this guy thought Obama has done to deserve an execution (I mean, he hasn't even gotten a chance to fuck the country up), but it might have something to do with race. Even in the Year of our Lord, 2008.

I described a bit of casual racism I'd experienced recently to a friend. He couldn't believe that kind of thing would happen these days. But maybe these are the days.

Everything is breaking down. The summer is breaking and taking everything with it. The dog days, they like to say. The middle of calendar summer, but kids start school next week. We're all breaking down.

Earlier this week, the pressure in my shower went from the somewhat pleasant weak stream to half of that. Making it a little tough to rinse everything in a timely manner. The drain suddenly took three times as long to clear the water. Yesterday, it went to barely getting water through the shower head, just dumping most of it straight from the tub spigot, even with the switch all the way switched. And now the water never turns all the way off. It's all breaking down.

I'm going crazy up by the lake, the funny looking man said.

Since starting my job and changing my schedule around, I hadn't played guitar. Maybe a month and a half of no strumming. My calluses had disappeared from my left hand fingers (the ones that make chords on the neck). But I wanted to learn "Sunday Morning Coming Down" for the upcoming Johnny Cash Tribute Night in early September. I've kind of got the song worked out, but now I have blisters on my fingers. There are little spikes of pain, even in the soft typing I'm doing right now.

I turned my Internet connections on this morning, but they won't connect. I can use other people's wifi to send this column off (the reception isn't as good, though), but mine decided to take today off.

A guy riding a bus in Canada stabbed a fellow passenger to death and then cut off his victim's head to show the rest of the passengers his prize. I don't know the motive, so I have to think there's madness involved. Even in Canada, the dog days of summer are a bitch.

I'm flying to Ohio in a couple of days, and if I got worried about these kinds of things (which I don't), I might think this isn't the time to fly anywhere. Too many things breaking down. Luckily my flights are early in the morning, so if something goes wrong, I won't be fully awake to appreciate it.

The pedals of one of the guitarists in my band went out mid-song at practice last night. A nice tone to a low feedback of empty sound. Kinda ruined the mood of the song. We all joked and popped a beer while connections were checked and pedals clicked. It's all breaking down.

I guess I should have known this was coming. A few weeks back I'd gone shopping after a few weeks of having nothing resembling real food in the house. I was all ready to cook up some rice and a piece of fish for dinner. I put water in a pot to boil and turned on the burner. Nothing. It's hard, sometimes, to figure out which burner was being turned on (the symbols displaying such information had been long scratched off), so I put my hands over the other burners. Nothing. I turned all the burners on. Nothing. I turned on the oven, and it began to heat up. Good, at least I could cook the fish.

I put the fish in and started the timer. Put away the rice, cleaned the pot and went to reading a half day old paper. About fifteen minutes later, the fish was half cooked. The oven was half heated. Microwaved fish is not good food.

A few days later, the landlady's guys came over with another oven, switched it out and realized the problem had been a kicked breaker. I got a slighter newer oven out of it, though. And I can tell which burner I'm turning on.

So maybe I should have known everything was breaking down. I should have been ready. Prepared, like they told us in Boy Scouts.

And I just tried the Internet connection again. It's working.

Now if the bathroom plumbing would start working again on its own.

Matt Worley is kind of handy, but he knows little about pipes and water.