There’s Something Wrong Here

It’s been eating at me for weeks now.

There’s something wrong. I don’t know, it’s just off.

Like I’ve stepped into some parallel timeline where things developed on Earth differently than the one I’m from.

This is not the Mandela Effect, either. No, not that. It isn’t a “remember history differently” per se. It’s more like a shift in the fabric of time and space that opened some shitty portal through which I unknowingly and most unjustly got pushed through.

Either that, or I’m dead, and this… this is Hell. And if that’s true–

–if that’s true, then Hell is a far worse place than what horror stories my evil parents warned me it was.

The first thing I want to say here is that we gotta have some understanding. Come on, between us. You and I. Let us, please, agree that we should be more afraid of facts that are lies than of real facts. The real ones do carry fear. The human race is in danger. Global warming can release tons of methane and CO² into the atmosphere. Ice and Tundra melt won’t help, and we can’t stop that from progressing. That is a scary fact. Another fact that seems hopeful is that the latest climate “accord” agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. That fact hides a lie. We could take a century to do that, and even if oil-producing countries agreed, they have to find other ways to make money. I can’t see what their incentive would be to keep their word.

It will, after that has been said, seem trite for me to write about the reason I may have been pulled or pushed or just haplessly walked here from a parallel timeline.

It goes like this: I hear by word of mouth that Japan has suffered another earthquake. But when I scan the headlines, it isn’t there. The top search result is about a million-dollar winner in Minnesota. As if that’s news!

Then: the inevitable. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

THEY WERE SPOTTED GOING FOR A DRIVE ON NEW YEAR’S DAY!!

Hold the presses! This is earth-shattering news, people! Strike the damned front page! We got us a fucking headline here!

Fuck the climate!

Fuck the wars!

Fuck an earthquake!

Fuck everything!

Holy shit! We almost missed out on the first top story of the year!

Somewhere, wherever printed newspapers are still sold, a boy with an armfull of papers is yelling, “Read all about it, extra, extra, read all about it, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift go for a ride in his Rolls Royce!”

Someone shoot me. Please make it a kill shot.

Okay. Okay. I’m okay. You’re okay, I’m okay.

LIKE HELL WE ARE!

It’s Hell. I died, and I’ve been sentenced to Hell. There’s no other explanation.

I admit it. I’ve taken up for her in the past. I will soon remove and trash those posts. Because I’ve had enough. Sunday, I watched the Chiefs-Bengals game. Taylor got her usual golf cart and VIP booth with Mrs. Quarterback (and didn’t she just break Elvis’s record?) and her boyfriend caught zero passes in the first half and nothing worth mentioning in the second because it was New Year’s Eve and all he could think about was that midnight kiss and the nooky-nooky that would follow. And by the way, Taylor Swift isn’t fit to hold The Kings’s dick, and he’s dead!

I. Don’t. CARE.

Not about Taylor Swift.

Not about overpaid football players who own a Rolls or Bentley or Lamborghini.

Not about football. Not anymore.

It stopped being football in 1971. The Golden Age of Pro Football died without any notice. Except I noticed. Quarterbacks like John Unitas, Joe Namath, Roman Gabriel, and Terry Bradshaw hunted touchdowns like a hungry lioness ready to spring out for a wildebeest. Monsters like Deacon Jones, Mike Curtis, and Buck Buchanan ruled the field and left behind them broken bones and early retirements.

The NFL exists in name only, a mockery of what once made it great.

And, Travis Kelce had best enjoy that nooky-nooky while it lasts. She’s acting a bit sub now, but it will wear off; she’ll clip his wings like she does every man she goes with.