Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold. Peas porridge in the pot, nine days old.

That’s all I’m going to say about this issue. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to do some investigating by yourself.

You’ll forgive me this lunacy. It’s 90 degrees out there and twice as humid. I’m sitting in my blazing apartment and pieces of me are dripping on the floor. Everything seems to be dripping. People outside sort of slosh when they walk and there are people puddles everywhere.

I am conditioned by nine-month winters never – under any circumstances – to complain about the heat. So, I’m not complaining. I’m just dripping. And there is a measure of delirium that comes with sitting stoically in a torrid apartment and trying to pound out a column. I’m afraid I may not write today with my typical, somber style as I tackle important world issues and enlighten readers with my thoughtful perspectives on weighty themes.

Quit laughing or I’ll come over and bust your air conditioner.

People should get crazy with the heat, but they don’t. It’s a big, fat myth. Misinformed friends come up to me all the time and say things like: “Hey! Flamer! You’ll be busy tonight, all right. It’s hot as hell and everyone knows that heat makes people nuts!”

Then they swoon a little before collapsing in a colorful pool of sweat and they are never seen or heard from again. And good riddance to them, the loudmouths.

Heat like this slows people down. The whole world seems to be struggling through a hot, wet sponge. Hooligans square off downtown and it appears fists are going to fly. But the first ‘hood rat raises his arm in violence and finds that it suddenly weighs 200 pounds. Throwing hands at an opponent would sap the last half-ounce of body water, and fainting at a fight just isn’t cool.

“Say,” says the first hoodlum. “It’s damn hot, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” says his soggy rival. “Hot as blazes, it is.”

“Quite right. What say we resume these fisticuffs in more accommodating climes?”

“By Jove, that’s a splendid idea. Let’s postpone this pugilistic affair and do something less strenuous.”

“Jolly good! Say … could I interest you in a Popsicle?”

“Oh, that would be delightful! And the last one to the Good Humor truck is a rotten egg!”

The ruffians slosh off in a storm of giggles as they race for the first drumstick or Sno-Cone.

Mean dogs sit like heaps of fur with tongues hanging out. Hookers hang on lampposts and consider careers with air conditioning. Crack dealers droop in the park and trade precious rocks for Slush Puppies and Freezie Pops.

Editors retreat to cocoons to await cooler weather in which to produce their larvae.

The heat will make people grouse and complain and dab their foreheads with any cool item they can find. Sweat stains circle armpits like untidy badges. Every single time a person steps outside, he is compelled to find a perfect stranger and declare: “My gawd, is it humid? Or what?”

They have forgotten about the horrors of winter. The 9-foot snowbanks. The icy wind blowing fresh snow down the backside. The shoveling, the misery, the temptation to drink anti-freeze and be done with it.

As I write, there is a crackle of thunder in the distance. A weird wind is rolling through the trees like a ghost. The world has gone strangely still and there is a pregnant silence outside.

My friends, it’s going to break. The heat will be rinsed away by driving rain and the delirium will end. The bitching will end. The stagnant peace will end, as tough guys wring themselves out like dishcloths and remember what those punks said about their mothers. Once grumpy men and women will stand outside in 70-degree weather and say, “Ain’t summer great? I wish it would never end.”

Like the winter before, they have forgotten about the unpleasantness of the heat wave. Such a delicate species we are, and so particular about our comfort. We want summer to last forever, but only if we can retain the springtime rapture, the autumn cool and the winter-fueled right to complain.

Me, I’m still dripping and I don’t remember what I wrote. Something about the war in Iraq, wasn’t it? A thoughtful diatribe about the impact of the London bombings on global unity? I’m sure it was profound and I will start spending my Pulitzer money now.

Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns! One a penny, two a penny. Hot-cross buns!

Ah, go ferret out the rest of that tale yourself. Good God, people. Can’t you see I’m melting?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.