It's 8 degrees. That's why this is a great idea.

As I type this, it's 8 degrees. For those of us in the northern U.S., it's a day when people will be talking about the weather--mostly about how much the weather sucks. This time of year, as you well know, we're tired of cold. We're tired of snow. We're tired of grey vistas only temporarily interrupted by swatches of brown mud.

And that's what makes South Carolina's Time to Thaw campaign such a great idea. South Carolina, you see, is expecting a high of 69 today, with a strange yellow orb appearing in the sky. Today in South Carolina, some people are probably even wearing shorts. Shorts, for the love of God!

As AdFreak reports, the people at the South Carolina Department of Recreation Parks and Tourism are well aware of all of this. And while they could offer a warm hug to their neighbors to the north, they have chosen instead to single out the people of Chicago for one collective neener-neener-neener:

The effort includes: 360-degree elevator wraps “that literally put passengers inside South Carolina locations”; phone kiosks in which the handsets have been refitted with conch shells; and a wall of hand dryers in the Grant Park North lobby that read, “Press button for warm South Carolina breezes.”

In short, the campaign offers Chicagoans repeated reminders that relief is just a flight-and-hotel-stay away--if, that is, they don't get stuck in a snowstorm at O'Hare.