What Can I Do?

Today, the morning after Thanksgiving, 2021, when I'm still alive and hearing news of a new COVID variant slouching towards Johannesburg, I'm imagining what it would be like if all songs in our culture were expected to sound at some point like a song from Sesame Street.

Like if, in the middle of “Sister Ray,” Lou Reed started yelling things like, “Sister starts with S / S makes a sound like a snake.”

And if ACDC included explanations in songs like “Thunderstruck” of what the words “up” and “down” refer to.

I'm thinking about how I'm right in the middle of a five-day weekend at home with the kids, and what it does to somebody, to spend five days getting pulled abruptly, and always at the worst possible moments, from anything they try to do so they can get cheezits for little people who only eat cheezits.

If Captain America were here, he would tear my arms off. He would smash me.

I'm reading this right now. It's what all the swank people are doing.