April 27, 2020

It is the fourth day of Ramadan, and I have had three burritos today. We gave ourselves a little more time this morning, seeing as 4 a.m. has proved day after day to precede the sunrise by hours. I feel we should do what the local imams are suggesting, but, on the other hand, I’m not Muslim. So I think I’ll get away with it.

I spent the rest of the day shuffling around and refiling filed papers, wandering around outside hungry and confused, and watching the movie Snowpiercer. I liked it a lot, and I plan on cramming all of Bong Joon-ho’s movies down my throat as fast as possible. I love gritty, awful science fiction. Sci-fi nowadays has a strange, fevered realism to it: everything is terrible, and there’s all kinds of fun new gadgets that go hand-in-hand with the apocalypse, but who is to say what the flavor of our dystopia may yet be?

I’ll be a goner as soon as I find myself in a disaster scenario worse than the present one, one where I am asked to do more than stay home and squeeze Donny T’s stimulus check like an emaciated tube of Federal toothpaste. Not eating regularly for three or four days has rendered me incapable of doing much else besides deliver food for Postmates’ fake fancy cousin, and watch my roommates play Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V. Rockstar Games have capitalized on a franchise of video games which allows stay-at-home ne’er-do-wells to murder endless throngs of pedestrians. I watch my friends mow down throngs of people like screaming bipedal centipedes, and I can’t help but worry that I too might be unprepared for lassos and rocket launchers when the day comes. Maybe Bong Joon-ho will put Westworld to shame and make a movie about a simulated man who defies all the odds, with nothing more than a triplet of virtual burritos.