U Can Do It, Putcho Meme Into It!

Well…‘that escalated quickly’.

This is certainly some new shit we get to play with in 2020. Just did Iran not-starting WWIII, but that’s old news now, my friends. This time, though…this time, world is def ending—we checked—so...I mean ok, bad...but on the other hand, work is cancelled and we haven't really run outta provisions yet so for now it's sorta permanent snacks and staycay/wake up every 20 mins to see if anything at work is on fire/anything irl (including cat) is on fire.

All good? Dope! It's 2:30pm...y’all know where your naps is at?

‘Cause I do, baby. Shoot, I'm half-asleep right now. Haven’t seen my pants since like Tuesday.

So, yeah. “Normal” is a bit under the influence, and fucked around the edges for lack of context atm…context like, ‘what bizarro-world comic book dystopia did we blink and 182 ourselves into, here?’

But you know, I mean…for the end of humanity, zombie-hoarder apocalypse and all, things are actually rather chill.

You see that meme about the end of the world being more like The Big Lebowski than Mad Max?

…you will. Oh, yes.

So, check one more time—rubbing alcohol check, wheat thins check, cat’s ok…check. I’m ok…I think? Wait, was that a sneeze brewing? …No. We’re good here in our hermetically-sealed little apartment flats, riding it out and trying to keep our cool.

But it’s almost as though I’ve forgotten something…something importan—jesuschristthewindowsareopen! Kill it with fire!

…whew.

Guess most of the real terror has mostly worn off—or at least, the blogosphere has gotten some kinda wonky handle on it (the way it does), and since we all apparently going to hell in a bucket of hand sanitizer...might as well enjoy the ride, amirite?

But wait a minute…who bought the ticket for this damn ride, anyway?

Bats? Really, gov’t newsy-peeples? Bats are killing us all right now? Like…for revenge, for that soup thing we started on a dare, like 4000 years ago? …Really?

Was this like one of those Groupon things that looked super exotic and cool in the pictures and then turned out to be not what we expected from our weekend retreat at fuckin' all?

So I guess, culturally speaking, there's a part of us that's still pretty freaked, if you’ll follow the analogy…remembering that crazy nite in Phuket with the ripped bug net (PS if you need a reminder about where Phuket is, don't Google it! Not that I ever doubted your excellent geographical command, here. But if you Google it, it's just gonna be more news about the killer demon virus killing everyone to death again, for no reason. Yes, even Thailand…there too. Yes, even the bugs...oh, no, wait, I made that part up—actually, bugs are all doing just fine, they are totally immune and still terrifying as shit. What I didn't make up, however, speaking of bugs, is the Book of Revelation-style locust ocean that's basically eating all the food from Africa to India right now...so if you want a distraction from the Covid bs, go Google that for a good time and get your mind on happier affairs, why don’tcha?).

So ok, this is like some bad half-birthday renupitalization trip…the difference here being that when we made it through our sleeping-without-bug-protection night-in-Thai-paradise-hell, in our minds we were Indiana Jones...we were legends. Somehow, we survived the temple of doom (read: inconvenience) and we swore neva, eva, yeeeva to go back there again.

Only now this is kinda like that nite only it's everybody and it's all the time forever and it's times like a gazillion (and the bugs will still kill you, only in this bizarro-reality they are the invisible enemy...! Go watch Trump say ‘invisible enemy…!’ 18 times in one sentence and shed a tear because it's honestly so terrible you can’t do it. Then for good measure, waggle your arms in place, back and forth indicating helplessness, just like our fearless Trumpian leader…see, aren’t we feeling presidential now? Sigh. So helpless. For crying out loud, orange man need better scripts…somebody help!).

So where our magic bug net now, peeples? How didn't we see this coming, how are we suddenly so ok with the end of life as we know it, and can't we just have one day where we, like, drop our doughnut by accident or something? Just start us out small, you know? And then we’ll have to look at the ground real quick and make a snap “5-second rule” call and then hope nobody noticed us stuffing our face with our delicious new floornut? ('Cause you know you ate that sucka anyhow—bitch, u paid 6 bucks for that thing…please!)

Can't things just go back to the way they were, like when we were kiddos—like about 8 days ago?

Brave and scared as hell, and what in frosting is next for us all, we wonder...as we carouse naked and unkempt through the interwebs with our newfound free time and descend to the depths of our own depravity.

Seriously? Like I didn't have more than a weekend off in my life and now you're making me stay in full-time superfriends bed-mode on purpose? Like…FOREVEaRR?!

This is Brave New Groundhog Day, guys. Only it’s that if Bill Murray just stayed in bed all day every day doing lines of soma and ordering more floornut frosting on Amazon Prime.

Thank Science they hired those 100,000 reserve frostingpackers, I hear you say.

Yup. I feel ya's. I do: thank the Science! I love my frosting as much as the next multitasking bedroom commuter.

But ok peeples—remember, we all still might die to death! This is no joke here! I repeat…stay alarmed!

—So say it wit me now—

Shit. Shit, and balls!; fucking Bifrösting, also.

Nerdswears…geekslurs! Ordinary profane language just isn't enough anymore, dammit! I want you fuh-reeked…aout.

So what then is left to us but to buy the suck and let 'er rip, eh friends? It's go time. Oh no time.

Snark-in-the-hole time.

And it's also time to TL;DR your asses, so stick with me here.

Ok, T-L-double-guh-ER—Earth is fuh-reeking out...q.i.d., like on a tight schedule. By the numbers.

The memosphere is lit as heck rn. We torchin' it up—love-the-smell-of-snark-in-the-morning, F35 carpet memebombing the blasted jungles of the social medias with impunity—and yet despite all that—honestly?—I still say this is when we do our best work.

You guys know yourselves—we're all crammers. We don’t do that time management stuff, that’s for zee Germans. We hoover up information last-minute and slide into our desk all cool exteriors and tempered nerves, and then we look that final raw moment square in the face, swallow hard, and do the damn thang with aplomb, with something approaching a kind of grace. Years of brain-stuffing for the Test has given us a sort of debonair nonchalance, an elegant awareness of our own probable impending doom, and most critically, a rather noteworthy acceptance of it.

Somewhere, thanks to Netflix and our own collective ennui, we kinda figured this would happen. Didn’t you figure it. Come on now.

We all kinda had an inkling.

You know who you are, ya damn cynical snarkster. Lurkin' there in the waters of ohsnappia, off the punsian peninsula, waiting until just the right moment to leap out and accept the fact that you basically honed in on this irony years ago, and have been awaiting its coming like one of the Old Gods ever since.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn…!

I mean you even bought the popcorn! Who does that? You’re probably eating it right now, while finishing up work emails to reruns of Fraiser on your phone and playing with your newly minted post-apocalypse cat.

Has it been 20 minutes yet? Cat’s still not on fire…oop, wait…nope, all set. Cat is check.

So we love ourselves a good laugh, and even more, a good facepalm. We know how to have a pretty solid time in the face of bullshit…cause we’ve been doing precisely that for many a year, now.

We’re old hands. Pros.

We're the ones laughing and playing waltzes sideways on the deck of the Titanic for the kiddos' sake, and the gratitude of their terrified mothers. We’re the ones who stopped caring long ago…who now, unbelievably, don’t have to pretend anymore, at least for a minute.

Income gone? S’ok. Plans canceled? Join the club. Spider from Mars? Yep, come right on in.

We do this thing, this letting-go zen-punk surrender-polka, as a kindness—to ourselves, to our tribe, to the whole messy blob of our lives.

Maybe we never made it to Phuket. I didn’t. Not yet. And we’ll see, maybe there’s still time. Who can know dis.

At the end of the day, we are the Moulin Rouge crowd. We’re quirky, obstinant, and off-the-cuff mayhem is sort of like our perfume.

Eau-de-f-it-y-knot, you know? It’s our signature brand. ‘Sure, bud...why not dance to the tune of economic seppuku and near-certain calamity? Count me in, this is gonna be frickin’ hilarious.’

Yes, indeed it is. So fuck not dancing to this sketchy stay-at-home song I actually kind of like, and also fucketh the fact that I cannot even dance. It does not matter anymore.

What actually matters to us, now?

…I mean definitely the cat, tho.

How bad can failing this whole life-semester be if we all go down in good company, together, and with that wonderful easy mirth that comes from Netflix-and-chill on carte blanche (and perhaps our probable sugar comas)?

See, I know we've kind of all been thinking, ‘I don't want this crazy life pressure, dig. I never did. I just love learning about/doing my own thing, and why do we have to make doing what we love a fucking competitive-ass sport all the time?’

Learning is supposed to be fun, and it’s a team sport, dammit, and we’re all on the same team, and the other team has assholes on it—like world hunger, and child sex trafficking, and oceans worth of micro-plastic, and your mom.

Your mom is so on that other team ;)

Sike! Lolz100sidewayscryingsnarkface (u know the one)!

Hahaha...le sigh.

Oh yeah. Almost forgot about how fucked everything still is for a second there. Sigh again.

What else is really left to us on this Friday of Fridays, but to hone our own particular brand of peculiar? While different members of our crew specialize in different facets of lestrange, at our core, we’re all weirdos—but we’re good at it, see. We crack people up when they are in the suck; we hold each other up by the shared awareness of WTF.

My humans, the WTF has never been stronger.

We are at peak WTF—serial WTF. Retro WTF-rockets have engaged and burn is holding stead—ohshitnotthecat…!

…no? Should I stop? …Nah.

‘I felt a great disturbance in the WTF...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly out of toilet paper.’

...I fear something terrible has happened.

How long we gonna do, huh? I mean, as long as it takes, right? Isn’t that what we do, hold the freakin’ door and throw our backs into it (putcho back into it!) (putcho meme into it!)—like the Cube-man said, ‘all I wanna do is have fun with my loved ones’…ain’t that the truth.

So the crazening is nigh, and honestly, my peeples, this is our time to shine. What a strangely twisted relief to see people being genuine, even if it’s at a time like this. Even if the doughnut supplies are running dangerously low, and pants are just barely a thing anymore.

So I guess let’s give it up, huh? Somehow I don't think this is the end, or at least our end. Might be a neccesary end to some dank-ass bullshit, though. Work meetings? Passive-aggressiveness that make you want to smack somebody...all that “normal life” shit? And that crazy attitude from Pam in accounting? (Sidenote: I’m so sorry, Pam…I just couldn’t bring myself to use ‘Becky’ again! Thank you for jumping on the everyman grenade for us, this time.)

Nope. See ya. Never going back. Blocked, deleted, cancelled. Had over a week of this life and now my attitude tolerences are completely recalibrated to myself and my pet iguana...Bruce Leezard (shoutout to my Kroll Show fanpeeples!).

So yeah, planet Earth…seriously?

How many times can I say this with emphasis and mean it?

Well…F it, I say. Spray that beautiful scent all up in your pulse points and let’s see what we can do about this term paper together.

Personally, I think we can do this. We can pass. Might not be pretty. Might go...weirdly.

Guess we’ll all find out soon enough, huh.

Wishing you all steadfastness and strength to weather the storm...hold onto your floornuts, cats and kiddies.

I have a feelin’ we ain't seen nuthin’ yet.

a sol rosen