We grow thin...

... as we grow fat.

There's a new roll I can feel when I bend a certain way. It's strange because I've always been a thin fellah. I'm the guy at the gym who has trouble gaining mass. I never really expected gaining weight to be something you felt in the areas of gain, physically, like a sock hiding in your shirt just pulled from the dryer. Some shirts feel like they aren't mine anymore. They don't sit right. They're just - wrong.

But in every other aspect, I've grown thin.

• Patience.
• Creativity.
• Ability to hold a thought.
• Capacity to engage an intelligent conversation.

I've written and deleted this post 10 times.

Autocorrect on Chrome is behaving like a fuckboy. It shows me the red line, I go to right click the word, the red line disappears. Again and again and again. Fuck you, Chrome, right in the face with all 22 cm of my disdain.

And I think this was his plan all along, for the final blow to come when so many of us are so completely exhausted. I know I read that somewhere. Crisis fatigue would be his deadliest weapon.

How am I supposed to start paying attention to the Atlantic conveyor belt - which has already delivered two named storms before the season was even officially underway - with the rest of 2020 happening around me.

Next Monday I need to go to Sam's to stock up the chest freezer for the coming grind.

I've not checked in since yesterday. Is America a goose-stepping banana republic in unaccountably garish, non-tactical uniforms yet? I mean, it's been a whole 24 hours. Given the current speed of things, I feel like that's a perfectly reasonable amount of time for it to happen.

Proud Boys... who thought of that name for you? You should fire that person. That's an embarrassing name, from a purely linguistic standpoint. It's flaccid and lacks any verbal testicles. Oh, wait, it's perfect then. Never mind.

I'm trying to leave Facebook. I hate that I have to try. I went somewhere else. The silence is deafening. Thanks, America, for the congenital addiction with which you saddled me, the addiction that started when I was eight years old, sat in front of the boob tube every Saturday morning to watch a five-hour block of toy commercials interrupted by more blatant commercials for the same toys I was looking at during the rest of the commercial (we called them cartoons). That was my first professional indoctrination. Rampant consumerism. And, oh boy, was it ever fucking professional. Complete with pavlovian positive reinforcement in the form of a brightly colored box of Sugar Frosted Sugar Balls from Kellogs or Post or whateverthefuck, and even a cheap plastic toy inside for my brother and I to fight over. That last bit was training for Black Friday, one of America's dearest and most cherished traditions, the very soul of American culture.

"Why didn't you just go out and play?" asked Karen.

"Because I couldn't, you oblivious donkey. I had a brother to take care of and parents who were scared to death of your culture. HAD TO STAY INSIDE. Now I understand why. Also, did I remind you that you're a donkey? Okay, just checking."​

Before I was Gen-X, I was a Latchkey Kid. I'll go to my grave with that key around my neck as a noose.

When I try to pull away from that constant cacophony of input, I don't know what to do with myself and start to fiend.

Just as a twee doily, wallpaper that gives you vertigo, a cup of perfect tea, and a lady named Hyacinth is to the U.K., so too is a Gatorade, sweatpants, and standing in the front of a Target at oh-dark-thirty to spend a little less money on crap than usual is to America.

What was I lamenting again? Oh, yeah, the culture that was happy to see the backside of my gay Puerto Rican ass when I left.

This version of the Matrix brought to you by Windows Vista running on the most disposable Acer they make.