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あらすじ・解説
Incrediwife and I had the sort of conversation folks like us are having now. We discussed what new breakfasts we can eat, to replace the ones we usually have, which are made using several eggs. We are not egg fiends, but we consume them most mornings, often with kale or bell peppers scrambled in there. I love cuisine.Now, thanks to the ghouls who are running our country, many of whom have never shopped at a supermarket, because they have always been so rich they have had others do everything for them, a dozen eggs in Kansas City cost $7.50. We have to moderate our egg consumption so we don’t lose too much money.Ours, I realize, is not yet an extraordinary hardship. We have tofu in our refrigerator at all times. A tofu scramble is always an option. We like oatmeal. I have a vegan brunch cookbook. Incrediwife, our kids, and I are prepared for this moment.I don’t know, though, what the next moment will be like. Will more people take the turn we have, and start making tofu scrambles instead of cooking eggs? If so, that could make tofu scarce. What will the next shortage be? And what’s going to happen if thousands more retirees stop getting the Social Security checks that have kept them from going hungry and unhoused? That’s a much bigger problem than my household not having eggs. I thought about getting a chicken coop and putting chickens in it. Chickens lay eggs. We could feed the chickens whatever we want, and take their eggs from them despite their protestations. We don’t have much of a backyard, but we have no neighbors in back of our house. There are only the woods out there. We could handle chickens. They make nice sounds.I looked up chicken coops online, and my first thought, when I saw this one on Chewy.com, went something like, No way. I cannot imagine confining chickens to such a limited space for their entire lives, strictly so I can continue stuffing my face with their eggs. They would have no room to move around! They would not feel joy. It’s without a doubt one of the most absurd thoughts I have had recently. Because, you know, chickens would be lucky to live in a small coop in my backyard. It would be about a hundred thousand times better than the places most of them live. You know? So, yes, eggs cost too much, and I expect things to get a lot worse. Things can always get worse. And they will.But sometimes, when I enter a room, and one of our cats is there, I say hello to him. You’re allowed to say hello without expecting a response. I don’t expect a response from the cats.And starting a paragraph with a conjunction is a great way to abruptly change the subject in your newsletter. But I am so tired of watching scenes in TV shows where one character tells another about their shared history. They retell a scene from their past, and the scene they retell is one they were both present for, which both of them remember. It happens on A Thousand Blows. It happens on Yellowjackets, and probably every TV show. Even the good ones do this thing that drives me up the wall. I wanted to provide an example of this in action, but when I tried googling it, not expecting much, or knowing how to describe what I’m going on about in a succinct google search, I found a website that’s meant to help people whose televisions have recently begun to address them specifically. Like, the programs aren’t for a broad audience of people anymore, the TV shows are instead directed at this one person. Their TVs are trying to tell them something important through the TV shows. It is apparently a symptom of mental illness, to become convinced that the TV is doing that. I know why people on television tell each other about things from the past that both of them remember with clarity and don’t need to have explained to them. They are speaking to one another for the sake of the viewers. They are telling each other things they both already know so that whoever is listening will learn about them. It’s a way for the writers to demonstrate for whoever is watching who these characters are, where they came from, and how and how well they know one another. It is a symptom of what some people like to call “character development.” And it is not only unnecessary, it’s a boring thing to sit through. It’s a way to check a certain kind of box, a way to help those who write in teams, the way TV writers do, feel like they are doing their jobs. If you’re writing a story and it’s going well, you don’t have to go out of your way to develop characters. That’s what’s supposed to happen in the course of telling your story. We learn who the characters are through their actions and from how they speak. If you feel like you need to stop and have a character explain to the audience who they are, that’s a sign that of one of three things: * You are William Shakespeare, it’s the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and the rules are different because it’s the past and you’re writing for the stage.* You’re ...