More Thoughts, 3 to be precise …
Transitions can itch. We have 2 major transitions in the US. I’m not talking about the demographics shifting from Gen Z to Alpha (what difference does it make?, we’re screwed), or that ever more card-carrying idiots are moving to Florida to fight massively distracting woke-ism with their bare teeth while clenching their floppy derrière cheeks. No, I am referring to the annual wardrobe transitions from Uggs to sneakers, and from sneakers to flip flops, and then back. Not much “in between”, other than treatment-resistant fungus. It’s like waiting lists — they are designed to get you off the phone and thus off the back of the call center operator whose Hindi is perfect but for some reason prefers to be called “My name is Staceeey, Sir, and this call may be recorded for training purposes” — right. Let’s face it, you’ll never ever come off that list — same goes for your athlete’s foot which is such a misnomer, given the grotesque, BMI-defying midriff that’s prevalent in the lower 49. When Darwin declared that mutation and selection is really all it takes, evolution got so pissed, it developed the pinky toe just to give fungus a fighting chance. Speaking of bio dev …
Ticks have a bad rep. They carry crippling disease and let’s be honest, their creepy look is not helping. Pest hunters drop the equivalent of agent orange on them each year and yet they seem to prevail sucking everybody’s blood at liberty. Here is a different perspective — the tick is the modern incarnation of antique’s Sisyphus, yes — the guy who pushed a stone uphill (as opposed to around it) only to have it roll down again — rinse, again. Sacrilege to bring in Greek mythology, you say ? — — not so fast. Get this, the little sucker climbs all day up that tall blade of grass, at heights the equivalent of skyscrapers, under constant aerial threat of some opportunistic birds. Then he waits, hours, days I suppose, until he senses some warm-blooded mammal close by and now comes the real feat — — he must keep his bony legs crossed he picked the right location (like a real estate agent on say Long Island), then calculate wind, drop rate and speed & size of the approaching victim to have a shot in hell to land on it (again, like a real estate …). If he misses, because e.g., he slept through geometry in tick school, he either suffers a traumatic brain injury from the fall or, worse yet, gets trampled on — either way, if still alive he then is forced to muster whatever energy is left to climb up again. Even if he gets the drop right the next time, manages to hold onto the unsuspecting dog’s hair and makes its way through the thick of the fur, he may have picked the one pooch current on powerful anti-tick meds and so the insect’s much deserved first bite will be his very last. Not much of a reward, is it?. So, all-in-all I’d say the tick will take Sisyphus’ rock and kick it out of the ballpark, together with the Greek’s lazy ass. While we’re knee-deep in philosophy, let’s talk …
Conspiracy vs. Perspiration. If you, like me, believe that the Chinese government is slowly subduing us with mail-in invasive plants (ask yourself: is the ‘Japanese’ maple really from Japan?), hot air balloons (which reportedly contain gigantic slips of paper with excessively long fortune proverbs, in font-8 to deliberately ruin our eyesight) and a weird abundance of (not so) Koi ponds in states with large TikTok usage, read on: We can all agree that having a swanky sidewalk makes it easier to sidestep the cutesy lemonade stands the kids put together in the summer, reselling Newman’s Own for a less selfless cause (& annoyingly, at a higher price) than Paul’s. Fittingly then, since about a year, we have construction going on to build a new pedestrian walkway one road over, and in the process put down some piping for tech that’s surely outdated by the time the next level of carcinogenic tar hardens on top. I don’t really mind that thanks to the raised (m)a(n)holes my car’s undercarriage has been ground down to aluminum foil since — it’s leased — or that the construction crew seem to be in a perpetual state of cardio-protective relaxation paired with visible disdain for those of us needing to go on with their lives, ideally before they are over. Clearly — while it sure looks deceptively simple in design, underneath it must put the Egyptian pyramids to shame given the freaking time it takes to finish this road in our lifetime. I bet that if the town would tell the construction company that we’ve just ran out of money this engineering marvel would be finished tomorrow, pure magic. So, in summary, I have good reason to believe the Chinese very likely have found a way to stealthily put Huawei tech underneath our street’s upcoming new pavement which will allow them to readily calculate — for our suburb, mind you — the ratio of pink lemonade stands divided by Amazon Prime returns. Important sh*t like that, you get it.
