American Fez

Going Going Gone

There is no form of existential dread quite as exquisitely dreadful as the existential dread of winning an eBay auction you do not want to win.

Except, perhaps, for the existential dread of thinking you've possibly written about the existential dread of unwanted eBay victories before, although a keyword search of previous blog posts produces no results for 'eBay.'

But what if my search engine is not the best? What if it is merely a spluttering and explosive single-cylinder search engine, suitable for powering only the most rudimentary of search charabancs, unable even to crank itself forward beyond the first two letters of any keyword entered?

That is the sort of existential dread that keeps you up a night, tossing and turning in an alphabetical meteorite shower of fiery vowels and consonants hurtling at great velocity across the inchoate space-time continuum of your anxious mind. 

My God, there is certainly a lot of existential dread about these days. I guess that will teach me to be the winning bid on a Being and Nothingness first edition that I have no interest in actually reading. I can only forlornly hope my bid does not meet the auctioneer's reserve. But I'm pretty sure it does.

And now I have the existential dread of using the ersatz poetical word "forlornly." Will it ever end? Will I ever be set free?

You Won't Feel A Thing

I always thought the End Times would feature more fire and brimstone than is proving to be the case. It seems the Dystopian Future is nothing but a drab conference room full of confused looking middle-managers and bureaucrats shrugging their shoulders. Rather more apologetic than apocalyptic, if you ask me. Behold the new Four Horsemen cantering around in circles astride broomsticks while making neighing sounds: Paranoia, Incompetence, Greed, and Apathy.

Of course, these are not really the End Times, merely another False Start of the Beginning of the End Times. Once more we have moved recklessly Knight-like across the chessboard of civilization from a square of relative safety to possibly checkmating ourselves. However, we've been cornered in this nose-pickingly difficult position before. Quite often as a matter of fact. Usually a pawn is sacrificed and our King remains reasonably secure. Alas, the pawn relinquished during this pandemic might be the freedom of the average person to move around the world at whim. 

I suppose activists of a certain stripe won't care too much about a general loss of global mobility. The less carbon footprints traipsing through the sky the better, as far as they're concerned. But it so happens that I enjoy my brief interlude in foreign climes each Spring or Fall. So if there's one single reason why I'll be joining the long lines of patients waiting for a vaccine, it will be to obtain a vaccine passport should such a document be required of tomorrow's tourists. I hope to collect many stamps on mine.