Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

And it's that time of year

when a person needs to be careful

needs to take care

the days are long and hot

and hazy

another summer to endure long and hot and hazy.

Another summer to endure.

It's easy to lose your determination in such conditions in a... dreary little town, nobody on the streets after dark.

Nobody except for a couple of hot rodders.

Racing each other, or more often racing themselves come midnight.

You can hear them from one end of the valley to the next.

How do they never crash into anything? It just eats at your nerves, this kind of

weather, and what's worse is you know that the hot weather is a month or two away.

What's bearable when you're alone under a cottonwood and the breeze is absolute torment when you're trying to get yourself from point A to point B and see ugliness all around.

Dead eyes behind the cracked windshields of erratically piloted vehicles, the never-ending trash piles, empty-stripped malls of crumbling stucco and blank plastic signs.

Long stretches of highway with nothing but human-built desolation.

The ragweed's coming up too.

Best to stay on the property in the company of the creatures who've survived this aesthetic apocalypse.

The trio of young rock squirrels

who've decided to base their lives around the big water bowl

...