I sip morning coffee at a Starbucks I’m at every Saturday and pretend to read The New York Times. I skim headlines, wonder how wonderful it’d be if I actually read the articles.

I look up and see Bob. I haven’t seen Bob in three years, not since I left my last job. I’m not thrilled to see him, but not unhappy either.

The DMV Statements folder, feeling cornered and bent out of shape, continued screaming at the bulging 2016 Tax Return, whose fat ass was jabbing into DMV’s pale-yellow, elegant edges, smashing the slight, thin folder into the back wall of the second drawer inside the darkened, musty file cabinet.

Drogon flew and flew.

What was wrong with all these garbage people, he thought. Drogon could totally think things like this because he was a completely sentient being.

One year and four cycles ago, our pan-am mega-island boldly ceded all authority, marketshare, and event planning to Amber Jambers, its First & Only Celebritator. Under her divine, righteous and benevolent leadership™, our new society finally remembered trash day, and left like 100 bags out for the garbage truck of history. Free from the detritus of a corrupted society, we, led by Amber Jambers, forged the most shiny path under the banners of Totality, Currency, and Libbers. So let’s party!

In my recently published article “Don’t Change a Thing, People,” which is nominated for several prizes, I discuss in detail the many reasons why we must put off for now solving the problems that most vex us. The main reason, as I clearly and even eloquently state in “Thing,” is that nothing useful can be done at this time. This simply isn’t the year or even century when the most pressing issues facing mankind can be resolved either entirely or in part. Time is fleeting, and in large part has fled quite a ways distant from us, to another galaxy. The time we should have spent getting things under control is now hovering around in space somewhere, lost to us forever.