Death From Above

I'm taking a break from my fascinating story. The break may or may not not be permanent.

What a disgusting world this is. The sooner we're all killed by an asteroid, the better. Or by many asteroids. Perhaps we could each be killed by our own asteroid. That would be pretty neat. Seven billion little asteroids finding seven billion targets, flush.

Of course, some people are in bunkers right now (nuclear fallout, golf). The asteroids assigned to the bunker folk would have to be very precise. They'd have to get through thick reinforced walls, mine shafts and electronically locked doors. They might need security keycards. But in this scenario, they can do all that. Asteroids with credentials.

This all happened before with the dinosaurs. It's high time it happened again.

I'm not a misanthrope. I also hate plants.

I got my hair cut recently. Immediately after I sat in the chair, the barber woman (barbress?) started giving me lots of information about her personal life. I know this is de rigueur in scissor circles, but she launched into it so quickly that I barely had time to tell her about my fatal gel allergy.

I like chatty people, as long as they don't need much input from me. If they want to shoulder the burden of the conversation, I'm more than happy to let them.

At some point, the conversation turned to her boyfriend/husband, and got really interesting. I'd bought a suit that day, and she began talking about how he finds it difficult to find well-fitting clothes because he has the body shape of a monkey.

"He has a really big upper-body, but really skinny legs. And long arms. He's technically overweight, but that's just because of the top of his body. Doctors say that his legs are actually malnourished. If he buys skinny jeans, they're baggy on him."

That's the trouble with traditional weight categories. They're an average of the whole body. You could have morbidly obese calves and no head, and still be considered healthy.

I was curious. I thought about asking to see a photo of him, and I'm sure she would have obliged, but I decided against it in the end.

I wonder if she was mistaken. Maybe she's only ever seen him from above, and so the disparity is merely an illusion of perspective.

She didn't seem that interested in the cutting of my hair, and neither was I. Still, it seems to be gone now.

I didn't have any change for a tip, so she probably felt offended that her interesting banter had gone unrewarded. I am full of remorse.

I bought a suit. I mentioned that in the middle of the last section. I've never bought a suit before. I feel like a proper grown-up. I bought it with the same speed and lack of thought as I do all my clothes. It fit, so I got it. Now I'm thinking about getting a job that requires you to wear a suit, like a gangster or a playing card.

But seriously, we're all more than ready for the asteroids. What more are we going to achieve? Let's quit whilst we're ahead. We're probably not going to top the metronome. That was the peak of human invention. Everything we do now (the tram, the computer, 2Pac's California Love) are just variations on a theme.

We may already be disgusting, but we could get even more disgusting. We don't want to get ourselves into a latter-day Simpsons situation. Cut our losses. Get the astronomers to beckon the asteroids with their powerful telemagnets; we've had a good run.