Picnics, Generally: Two decades have come and gone since the last time I was press-ganged into attending a picnic. Which is fine, because fuck picnics. When you say something like “Let’s have a picnic” or “Come with me to this picnic,” you’re buying into a middle-brow American myth that there’s something enjoyable about laying on your side on a blanket in some park with food from a semi-insulated cooler. This is one of many lies generations hand down to successive generations. But there’s nothing fun about mosquitoes and gnats feasting on your exposed flesh while ants and other terrestrially-confined insects make a bee-line for your food—then if that doesn’t happen, the day turns cold, the wind kicks up, belligerent strangers mean you can’t hear yourselves, no one remembered the wine. Picnic benches are more sensible, though, usually.
Buying a Soda for a Sweetheart as a Present While in the Throes of Adolescence: Look, sodas are cheap and sweet, and there’s something empowering about buying into a heavily-advertised brand while maybe impressing someone whose hand you’d like to hold. But it’s never too early to learn that your teeth and your crush’s will rot and crumble, and that soda accelerates that process. So cop a salad instead, wrap a bow around it, bring along matching forks.
Voting: Voting’s for suckers; it never improves anything. Why bother?