No Competiton

In the modern winter, you just can’t compete with the indoors. From a touch on your phone, warmed streams of air trickle from the low heavens and dance with the tiny hairs on your ear. A particle-reenactor presents you with a dizzying supply of drama, comedy, and commentary. And why not pick up a game controller, and manipulate the glowing particles to your will, while delivering the reverberations of your larynx through thin air to fellow waking meat bags thousands of miles away? Perhaps you care to join in the frenzy of the global bazaar and instantly soak in the lives and opinions of millions of others? Or, perhaps you wish to command the gravitation of any item you fancy delivered directly to your home no later than tomorrow?

All can be arranged for you in the great, modern indoors. No black slushy ice resting at the bottom of your feet, streaking the floor with wet prints and attacking your carpets with an endless supply of non-savory salt. No dramatic accelerations of pulse as you rush from building to building heaving and weary; no shortness of breath that must be compensated for. No beach-cold winds gnawing and slapping at your face every which way.

Just warm air and smooth calming lights.

This weekend, Chicago was hit with a barrage of snow, blanketing the streets and rendering cars immovable.

On Friday night, the dog’s sustenance bag had run dry, so I opened my particle-syncer to amazon, and placed two bags of delicious rock balls in my cart, and amazon, seemingly unaware of the present snowpocalypse, offered to have my package for me by tomorrow. I said, go home amazon, you’re drunk. There’s no way you’re getting my package here by tomorrow.

It snowed a little more on Saturday, and around 6pm, I get a call from a Seattle area code, which I know to be amazon.

My package had arrived.

...

My (uncontrollably outgoing) friend asked me if I wanted to head out in the muddy freezing chaos and perhaps go see some live music?

I said, have you gone mad mate?

My wife asked me if I wanted to go sledding on the freshly fluffed snow hills some thirty miles away. I said, have you gone mad dear?

In the winter, there’s no competing with the modern indoors.