assorted essay openers
essays I started this year but did not finish.
Chipotle surveillance state
Have you ever been dissatisfied by the serving sizes in your chipotle bowl? Have you ever wanted to to be a fucking weirdo? Well do I have the hack for you!
Patrons of the (allegedly) Mexican, fast casual restaurant have found out that according to a new policy, if Chipotle workers notice that they are being recorded by a customer, they must be more generous with their servings so that customers do not complain and lower their ratings online. The hack has gone viral, so l'm prepared to see customers wield their cellphone cameras like weapons against chipotle workers. The internet has long been at war with chipotle employees, videos and tweets complaining about the "stingy" way the workers fill the bowls/burritos/tacos. As if the employees are trying to minimize the amount of food given to customers because they want to keep it all to themselves. As if the food isn't weighed to determine if too much has been given to paying customers to increase profit.
I hope I don’t die of colon cancer
The best thing about the future is the myriad of new ways to die. I could suffer a long covid heart attack and literally drop dead. I might drown in a flood caused by a hurricane in places where they shouldn’t be. I could be murdered in cold blood by our lovely fascist police state. Or the microplastics and radiation from having an electronic metal object a foot away from my body at all times might give me cancer.
I hope I don’t die of colon cancer. Honestly one of the best things about being alive is taking a good shit. I have a poop stool in my bathroom that allows me to really express. If I get colon cancer my ability to do that will constantly be in limbo. At least I think it will be. See, I’m not well equipped enough to get cancer!
Catch 25
The world is ending, and I can’t come.
Tragic.
According to my psychiatrist, at a whopping [redacted] mg, I’ve maxed out on the amount of [redacted] I can take before I start going into epileptic shock. I take 40 mg of Prozac for my anxiety, and it made me sweat so much that I have to take 5 mg of oxybutynin, a drug prescribed to patients with overactive bladders, so they don’t secrete an abundance of liquids I guess. It’s working. I still sweat but I don’t drip after mild activities the way I used to.
My drug cocktail works. I can survive a full workday without breaking down. I’m so numb and I can’t cry, and I can’t come.
Dating show hell
Dating shows are actually fucking terrifying. A few months ago, I tried to watch the first episode of a new season of the bachelorette, because the bachelorette was black (sue me). And maybe I’d smoked something prior to turning it on but I felt fucking insane and almost scared as I watched. The show opens with us meeting the bachelorette, I think her name was Taylor. She tells us about her job, we meet her family, she tells us where she went to college. And then we get down to the nitty gritty. What does she want in a partner? “Someone who loves me for me and something something something.”
Then, she meets the contestants, and one by one they introduce themselves to our bachelorette. They have only a few seconds to make an impression on her, so they can get to the next round. Some tell jokes, wear weird costumes, sing, or do parkour. Throughout the episode there is an air of desperation. You can see it in their eyes. They need her to remember their names. Their lives depend on it. It feels like there are hundreds of them, and despite their diversity, they all blend in my head.
I didn’t finish the episode.
Honestly, I don’t remember much of what I saw but I remember how it made me feel. My ever-present sense of doom could be to blame, but I saw the prioritization of marriage for young American women being sensationalized and packaged into this beautiful, exciting experience. But it also looked insanely fucking boring. It’s perfectly manicured. Everyone has perfect teeth and skin and the “ideal” figure. Nothing is out of place. How disturbing.
Horny Jail
One of my favorite nuances about American culture is the sex aversion/obsession that plagues every section of our minds. It’s very evident in the legislature that is being passed across the country. Porn is illegal to access in North Carolina, and a wave of laws banning gay people from publicly being gay are coming into effect with every passing day. They’re doing it to protect the children from sexual immorality, and yet sex is all they can think about.
The weird sex stuff isn’t just an issue with republican lawmakers. It has started to trickle down into twitter discourse, where young people with Ariana Grande profile pictures ask about the necessity of sex scenes in movies. I experienced it firsthand some time ago, when I made a TikTok about the Bottoms movie and how excited I was to see it. I got tons of comments telling me that the film being set in a high school was a bad idea, because “pervs get off to this shit.” A movie that wasn’t even out yet. It seems like sex is the only thing anyone can think about.
The award shows made me thing about this. Shortly after Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein campaign was released, he and his castmates were asked to “react” to the images of him modeling underwear while on a red carpet. What do we as an audience want them to say?
Are men not allowed to serve cunt anymore? This used to be a proper country. Why are we asking people for their thoughts on Jeremy Allen White being a little New York City slut in his Calvin’s? Let men be men! He has child support to pay, cigarettes and shea moisture to buy. You would do it too for a check!