I feel like such a jerk.  Last night I went to bed with July and this morning I woke up with August.  Apparently the latter month had snuck in while I slept and quietly got into everything - my closets, my cupboards, even my lint collection - before permeating my pillow and all the covers.  
     This isn't the first time August has done this to me, of course, but it still always comes as such a shock - especially when I enter the living room while still half asleep and find its sweaty dog days sprawled all over the couch.  You'd think the pushy little month would at least have the decency to bring me a proper holiday at least once when it comes to stay for no less than four weeks without calling first, but no.  The best it can do this year is give me the 25th anniversary of the last episode of "The Brady Bunch" - and I have to wait until the 30th to get that!
     It'll be wrapped in the ugliest paper imaginable, too - you just wait and see.

     The day went downhill from there. 
     I've tried to avoid mentioning my many physical ailments in this journal out of respect for the kids in their 30s who may be reading it without any inkling of what's in store for them the moment they hit 40, but the time has come to acknowledge one in particular, otherwise the rest of the day's events I'm about to relate will make no sense whatsoever.
     I suffer from a periodically  inflamed inferiority simplex.  As near as I can tell, my parents had wanted to give me a standard inferiority complex, but in the end they concluded that I just couldn't handle it.  So they gave me a simplex instead.  I've always thought it was a hand-me-down from my uncle, but Mom assures me that they stole it new from a bag lady with more inferiority in her than she could ever use herself. 
     In any case, this inferiority simplex periodically becomes inflamed. 
     Today it was inflamed more than ever.
     And all because of corn.

     I live in Ohio.  Ohio is in the Corn Belt.  Mother Nature whaps me across the ass with that Corn Belt every summer.  I don't think She means to, it's just that there's so much corn around this time of year that She doesn't know what else to do with it.
     There are over 37,000 corn farms in Ohio alone.
     That's about one farm for every 300 Ohioans - or about 1 full acre of corn per resident.  With numbers like that, I guess it's a wonder I don't get whapped across the face as well as the ass.
     Still, it's hard to to take comfort from such small miracles when your ass is swelling up and giving the dog days on your couch that much more of a target to snap at. 
     It's even harder when a single ear of corn inflames your inferiority simplex as nothing else can.

     Here's the thing, the inescapable truth: Corn is just so much better than I am.
     A single ear of corn has 600-800 kernels.  My entire body has none.
     A single ear of corn has 16-18 rows with 40-50 kernels per row.  I have no rows.  I know.  I've looked.  And I've just looked again to be sure.
     Corn pollinates itself between 9 and 11 a.m. over a 5-day period.  I've never pollinated myself, ever.  Not for a minute.  Not for a second.  And it's not because my religion forbids it - it's because I simply can't and I have no idea where to go to learn how. 
     It's a wonder I was allowed to graduate from high school without mastering this simple biological act, but there you have it.  My state's educational standards for its humans are lower than those that prehistoric Indian tribes had in place for their maize.... 

     And all of this is just the start of corn's impressive résumé.
     Corn is our country's #1 crop.  I'm far, far down the list, way below even sorghum, millet, and caraway seeds. 
     Corn can stand to be harvested by big mechanical devices without so much as a whimper.  I break down and cry at the mere mention of "speedometer needle."
     A bushel of corn can sweeten 400 cans of soda pop.  If I so much as spit into a single can, it's immediately stamped "Unfit For Human Consumption."
     Corn has been featured in many movies, from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Children of the Corn" to "Cornbread, Earl and Me."  I take a very bad picture.
     Corn is very popular in the South.  I think about three people on the far side of the Ohio River have heard of me - and I have reason to suspect that two immediately plugged their ears with paraffin afterwards.
     Tons and tons of Ohio corn is exported to grateful consumers around the world every year.  In my entire life, not a single foreigner has expressed a desire to put the smallest part of me in his or her mouth.
     Corn is used in the making of over 3500 products, including adhesives, antibiotics, animal feed, batteries, chewing gum, cosmetics, de-icers, detergents, dyes, film, fuels, ink, oils, paints, plywood, soap, shoe polish, and toothpaste.  In fact, of 10,000 items in a typical grocery store, at least 2,500 items use corn in some form during the production or processing.  As for me, well... the one time my own sister found a short hair from my body in her soup, she screamed a scream which made it clear that I could never, ever tell her about the scabs I put in the meatloaf....

     It's so unfair.  Corn's yellow, I'm yellow.  Corn stands around in the fields for weeks, I sit in my chair for weeks.  Neither of us knows to come in from the rain.  Neither of us can put a basketball through a hoop to save our life.  Neither of us has a single close relative with an IQ comparable to that of a banana.
     Maybe if I let farmers spray me with whatever they want, whenever they wanted, I'd become known as a hot cash crop, too.
     Maybe if I let every migrant fieldhand who came along husk me, I'd now be on a fast conveyor belt to the top of the silo as well.
     Maybe if I allowed Green Giants to shove me into their cans along with beans and whatever else was in season, I'd even get into movies.
     As it is, I'm hopelessly human - and a not very good human at that.
     Thank goodness I've recently found something that tends to calm my inferiority simplex.
     Too bad that it happens to be corn squeezings....