Only Whales should be in Pods

And so, I had my cup of coffee and the cat was fed and the morning looked grimly cloudy but at least not cold and it was a Monday and Mondays are always full of optimism which gradually dissipates into abject misery by Friday, as we know, but we only truly know by Wednesday afternoon when we start sobbing over the number of emails to respond to and there isn’t enough coffee in the day to keep us awake.

So I did the crossword and the Wordle thing and turned on the news sites. I tried very hard to start in the optimistic narrative where the economy is lovely and the wars are so far away as to almost be incidental and the price of gas went down and pineapples are on sale and politicians truly care about the little people and a new high-end restaurant just opened. And that was delightful.

And utterly ridiculous for anyone who actually lives in this world.

But I suppose it makes the newscasters happy and politicians even happier and who are we to take that away from these silly people anyway? They are unfortunately lost in a narrative and can’t find Waldo for the life of them.

They are not happy people and we must be compassionate. Somewhat.

In any event, in my desperate effort to find truth in a world of propaganda from both sides, I reluctantly went off and researched the other side again. And apparently the economy is imploding, wars are coming to our home territory, the price of gas will go up astronomically, pineapples are outrageously expensive again and politicians don’t even remember who the people are who elected them let alone understand them and slews of restaurants have had to close up shop this month because nobody can afford them anymore.

Yeah. That’s unfortunately more likely. We know this because we actually live in the world of reality. Sometimes at least.

So I decided to do the only sane thing and concluded it was time to Death Clean.

This is something I’ve just learned about that Nordic types do for some reason—they clear out their living space of everything that they don’t want people to have to handle when they die. For example, your dear dear collection of plastic milk tabs, or that sweater with more holes than wool that is just so comforting, or that book collection about Absurdism during the conquests of Genghis Khan.

Yep. We have to swallow hard and realize that not everybody appreciates the finer things in life and we don’t want such types to be mauling our collections so cavalierly. We must find them respectful homes.

So Death Clean it was for me—to start off the week with a positive measurable goal. Now, I made it through the first drawer in the kitchen with enthusiasm but I will admit it was that whole thing about “Death” that kind of started wearing at me.

I mean, that implies that we give a darn about anything after we die and why should we? I mean, we’re dead. For heavens sakes! The only person who cares about my collection of plastic milk tabs hasn’t phoned me in ten years. Why should I give them anything?

I’ll have to donate them to a museum no doubt. And if they don’t want them then they’re damn fools who don’t appreciate the historical enormity of plastic milk tabs and what they represent about our decaying decadent indifferent society.

So of course, if they care at all about preserving cultural inventions, they’ll be delighted by this donation. Of course, they’ll have to wait because I couldn’t possibly, after all this time, stop collecting them until they are actually no longer made. It wouldn’t be right somehow.

So, I decided to leave that drawer full of tabs alone and went off to death clean the bathroom. That’s when I looked in the mirror.

I’m getting old.

I’m so old now that I’m probably senile. I mean who the hell, other than senile old fools, are motivated to do cleaning when facing the inevitable insult of dying one day? And probably all alone on the back stoop having been tripped by raccoons and gone head first into the water pot. And probably wearing some ugly old thing I’d just thrown on in a rush.

There is just no dignity to this dying thing. None whatsoever.

Unless of course I buy myself a Death Pod.

So, after some research I realized that, although available soon elsewhere, Amazon doesn’t sell the death pods yet. And even if they did, they aren’t going to be popular you know. Death is one of those things that we tend to avoid like the plague or because of the plague or Co*vid or something. And that has been one of those ideas we’ve been attached to since forever.

Now I know that it seems like armageddon is popular these days but really, at the end of the day, we don’t much want to die really. Until we have to.

And so then while I was looking at pictures of the Death Pods and trying to determine what colour I’d pick it occurred to me that this is no friggin’ way to start the week. So do not Death Clean.

No wonder they’re so darn depressed in the Nordic countries according to people who research these things. It’s not about the lack of sunlight but more because they have something called Death Cleaning. I mean really!

We need to go up there and do something for these poor people. Who in their right mind would invent such a thing? Unless of course there is more to this Global Agenda than we know and that is definitely not something to be thinking about on a Monday. We can save that for Friday when we’re in a more morose frame of mind.

Here’s an earworm that is just an earworm:

Sylvia Shawcross is a writer from Canada. Visit her SubStack if you’re so inclined.

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