Simulating Summer

What do you do when temperatures dip to a positively unnatural -20 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 degrees Celsius for the non-initiates)? If at all possible, board yourself up in your cave, put your samovar in overdrive, and do everything you can to trick your brain into believing it's summer. The following things have given me some relief.

1. The new Destroyer album, Kaputt, which is doubly-summery-- it's vaguely nostalgic in precisely the way August is, and it channels the 80's, which are eternal summer, in the best way possible. I showed a dear friend this video, and he asked me, "Is that guy Dan Bejar?" Only in my dreams...

2. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), which is suffused with all the sunshine that one could possible desire, enough perhaps to become somewhat stifling. Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I have a soft spot for white dresses and inconceivably monumental rock formations, and this contains plenty of both.

3. Hallucinating elaborate and lengthy thunderstorms! For it is not just the sunshine that one misses in winter- the electricity simply is not there, and thundersnows are the rarest occurrence. I attempted to find a virtual substitute, and came closest with the 'virtual thunderstorm with a 3-d holophonic sound illusion' (I'll give anything a try that sounds like it could be part of a 19th century sideshow), but I think the science of artificial 3-d thunder is dubious at best. Still, it is better than the snow, which absorbs any sound at all.