the national evil vs. the sun

“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun.”

Admitted: Evil is on the pasty side—the fires of his hellish abode may be hot, but in terms of UV, they gots nothing on the sun. Over the years, he has occasionally wondered how his equally-if-not-more pale ancestors found their way to the American South and its relentless beating sunshine. He imagines them standing at the harbor in Dublin as two lines formed, one to board ships bound for Ellis Island, the other for Charleston, South Carolina. And Evil’s ancestors, possibly being illiterate, having no idea. Just wanting to get the hell out of Ireland.

Or maybe they just moved here in the winter and thought nothing of it. Either way, here there be Evil. And his unending war against the sun.

Like most people of northern European ancestry, the Evil didn’t start this fight with the sun. He wants nothing to do with a battle against an effectively immortal antagonist who can’t be reached by any conventional weapon. But still it’s there, rising to pick on him every day of Georgia’s six-month summer.

This weekend Evil spent a day on a lake. Under that sun. He took precautions, oh yes, in the form of that fancy new spray-on suntan lotion all the Olympic athletes and movie stars are using. Which leads us to a public service announcement. No, something along the lines of a warning siren from the emergency broadcast people:

That spray-on suntan lotion is BULLSHIT.

The Evil takes this sunburn, skin-care stuff seriously. Do not doubt that he sprayed himself liberally, extravagantly, often—you’d think he’d developed a fetish for the stuff. (Not so; his fetish runs more toward the painful stuff. Which the sun has provided in abundance. Which puts the Evil in a difficult spot regarding his hatred of the sun. . . . You know, just scratch all that. These parenthetical revelations are starting to feel like a mistake.) And yet there are spots on his chest and shoulders that look as though some demented, overheated binge-eater spattered hot-wing sauce all over the Evil. He is spotted like a jaguar. (Ah, screw it. Evil loves his parenthetical revelations. You should know he just dropped the British pronunciation of that word: zhya-gyoo-arr. The ladies think that’s irresistibly sexy.)

So, lesson learned: one can’t simply spritz away the pummeling death rays from his and C. Montgomery Burns’s greatest adversary. Next time you frolic in the sun, think of the painfully spotted pelt of the Evil and cover yourself with real suntan lotion—you know, the mayonnaisey stuff.

Remember that Evil cares about you.