The end times are definitely upon us.
A five-foot-tall Chris Morgan, famous online as “Bagel Guy” for a viral rant in a Long Island bagel shop about how women on dating apps treated him because of his height, has signed a contract with a fight promoter.
A contract to fight some other viral internet celebrity. (Morgan posed for photographs and said that he wouldn’t need to train for the event because “I’m just naturally tough.”)
Meanwhile, the Loretto Police Department in Tennessee took to Facebook to warn people not to flush illegal drugs — particularly methamphetamine — down the toilet, because of the supposed risk of creating scores of dangerous meth-gators.
But whatever you decide to do — camping, cod fishing, a trip to familiar summer cabins — take the extra step and see if you can’t fully unplug from your electronics for a good chunk of that time, if for no other reason than to learn again how to separate the important from the ridiculously unnecessary.
So, meth and circuses.
Meanwhile, North Korea muses about resuming weapons testing, the U.S. president is regularly threatening war with Iran and intolerance seems to be on the rise in this country as well as having a strong foothold in America. Sigh.
It makes you wonder if you shouldn’t get away from it all.
And this time of the year, maybe you should be thinking about doing exactly that.
Have you been to St. Vincent’s to see the humpback whales? Make the trip and turn off the phone. Want to see the Northern Peninsula, and, if you’re from the St. John’s area, see that strange concept known as sun and summer temperatures? Yes indeed. The road beckons.
This is a great place to plan summer vacations, and to take a little crucial rebuilding time away from it all. Maybe Fogo Island. Maybe Burnt Cape. Maybe a bit of salmon fishing in central Newfoundland. There are an endless number of opportunities right here at home.
But whatever you decide to do — camping, cod fishing, a trip to familiar summer cabins — take the extra step and see if you can’t fully unplug from your electronics for a good chunk of that time, if for no other reason than to learn again how to separate the important from the ridiculously unnecessary. A few weeks of downtime might be a balm you didn’t even realize that you needed — a chance to stop the Pavlovian check-check-check-checking of social media to see if anything has happened in the few short moments you’ve been away from your screen.
Be sure to be back by Sept. 7, though, when Chris Morgan will most certainly be taking on some opponent made famous by a smart phone and some distinct flavour of outrageous behaviour. A man who yells at squirrels in a made-up alien voice? Someone who is videoed trying to swim through sidewalk slabs of as-yet unset concrete? The mind truly boggles.
Why not up the ante? Maybe Morgan can combine things and wrestle a meth-gator.
And the gator can decide just how naturally tough he actually is.
