An open letter to an aging hippie:

I mean, there must be what, a hundred
websites out there? What would be the odds?

I'm just saying, maybe shut up? No, not you, you. The person who blew past me on the way out of the bookstore in which I work to tell me World War III had started. You're almost certainly not reading this blog, but on the incredibly, and mathematically unlikely chance that you happen to stubble upon it somehow, I'm going to take this opportunity to invite you to please shut up. I know you're something of a local character, and we're all super-interested in your take on world events, and everything they don't want you to know, but seriously, you really messed up my day.

Neither or which sound like the kind of crisis
that would involve reinstating the draft, but
it's hard to argue with a passing rando.

You may recall stopping briefly on your way out of the bookstore to remark to one of the staff that you are glad to be in your sixties so that you don't have to fight in the war that's just started. "Everything's over, this is the end" you warned before turning to go. "Wait, what happened?" said the bookseller--me--reaching for his--my--phone, so see who'd declared war or which country launched ICBM's, only to find nothing but some nonsense about Prince Harry's lawsuit, and how Wonka was kind of a letdown.

Here's the deal: I, like many people, woke up one day to buildings exploding and then collapsing on the news. This was followed by two prolonged wars against unrelated countries--something something yellow cake--during my most draftable years.

Was it though?

Above: Pretty much.

And ever since, I and pretty much everyone in Generations X-Z obsessively check our phones half a dozen times a day to see what new and terrible calamity has befallen the world. Tsunamis, mass shootings, Republicans. We live in a state of constant dread at all times of these and any number of similar disasters both real and imagined. And at this moment there are currently two wars threatening to drag the rest of the world into conflict, so like, I'm already at an eight out of ten all the time. All the time.

So as a member of an anxiety-addled generation that can find no solace in pot or the Grateful Dead from the many terrible things out of our control, and who will probably spend twenty or thirty years after you're gone living with the consequences of climate change, please, please stop spouting paranoid nonsense, because you're freaking people out. Oh, and while I'm at it, maybe shut up about Robert F. Kennedy Jr? He's full of shit too.

thanks,

-a bundle of nerves 

Pictured: Anti-vaxxer Robbert F. Kennedy Jr. seen here with
noted white nationalist Eric Clapton. I'll just leave it at that.