Or we might all die.
And that’s okay, because some of us — and here for the benefit of the humorless is the rider: I am about to employ a technique known as ‘sarcasm’ so get ready — some of us deserve to die. That’s right, die. The natural winnowing process due to old age, illness, and misadventure scoops a percentage of us into timely and untimely graves every year, but a finer distinction should be drawn for those who die for no reason other than their own stupidity. There are lots of sharks in the shallow-end of the gene pool, so if you contract COVID-19 in that illegal tanning salon Jewleigh set up in her garage then, au-revoir stupid.
We live in a world where every dull nuance of human experience wants its media moment, so the #Bleak_Lives_Matter movement must surely be just around the corner. Women (and men) who’ve spent a hazy decade or two in self-denial would now be looking into the mirror every morning thinking, holy living fuck what is that? You know what it is, and it isn’t the brave yet exceedingly subtle ashen highlights you paid $300 for last month. No, lurking under that perky inverted bob with icy-blonde babylights is a full head of grey hair. In the busy hen-house of life you are neither the spring chicken nor the strutting rooster, but the old boiler. The answer, contrary to instinct, is not to create a Baylayage Action Group Facebook page to rage against the nanny-state regime destroying you quality of life, but to laugh and pour yourself another wine.
For the guys, I know its killing you not to have weekend sport. The thing that got you through the week is now gone; instead, you’re surrounded by kids several years older than they were the last time you noticed them, and a wife who — sweet jesus, what is that?? Grey hair, dude, calm down. And no, she hasn’t had her nails done, her eyebrows plucked, her legs waxed, her lips plumped or her wrinkles eased this week, either. If you think you’ve stepped into the middle of an Anglo-Saxon epic poem in your underpants with nought but a DVR remote to fend off Grendel, then you are mistaken: that’s not a monster, it’s your hairy wife, so give her a hug (because she needs it), and if you do happen to pass a mirror stop and have a good look at yourself. You are a disgrace. Why are you still in your underpants?!
For the young, you have discovered there aren’t enough nano-influencer gigs to go around. Sexy in sustainable jeans just isn’t getting the likes it used to. Dejected, you tweet #MeAt20 pics from your bedroom, wondering where it all went so wrong. The world you thought to shape is shaping you instead. So unfair! After you’ve finished taking selfies of yourself moping (no job, no school, no girlfriend, no future), go make a sandwich in your parent’s kitchen, warm your toes by your parent’s fire, and massage away the sadness with re-runs of BoJack Horseman on your parent’s Netflix account. Life isn’t too bad. CV19 is mostly not interested in you, and your scorching ambition to be CEO of something very important and well-paid by age 26 has been delayed, not defeated. Patience you must have.
Now, because I want to keep my virtual-diary (ie WordPress account) let me reiterate that the “I think all dumb people should die of the plague” motif was not used in earnest. But, you know, stupid people. It is one of life’s ironies that folk may be demonstrably bone-headed, but that doesn’t prevent their idiocy contaminating others. There always seems to be at least one asinine narcissist out there shouting “Liberate Minnesota!” or something. If you want most people to live through this horror, and have a guy who doesn’t understand science (or ethics, climate change, propriety, due process, finance, tariffs, North Korea, free trade, race relations, Vladimir Putin, or women for that matter) then FFS why put him in charge??
Seriously, America.
