Come on over and say hello sometime, we’re all going to be dead soon.

This is what I yell at the neighborhood when I drunkenly take out the empties at night.

Not that it’s much of a neighborhood. There are only two houses close by. The closest is occupied by a middle-aged guy and his wife who live right across County Road 9 from my hovel. I never see the woman and he’s the unfriendliest guy on earth.

In the many years I’ve lived here we’ve spoken maybe five times, and each time I initiated the conversation. I actually walked across the road to say hello.

“You want to go and have a drink?” I asked on our second encounter.

“I don’t drink,” he said.

“Well, how about a coffee?” I said.

“I don’t drink coffee,” he said, “it makes my heart palpitate.”

“Okay,” I said, persevering like hell, “how about we go to the park and have a drink of water from the fountain?”

“Oh, I can’t go to park because of all the pollens in the air. I have very serious allergies.”

I finally gave up, but I put in a parting shot. “Well, I tell you what, why don’t we just stick a gun barrel in our mouths and blow our brains out.”

He stopped talking to me altogether after that, and doesn’t even wave back when I wave to him.

They next closest neighbor is a very large and rich house a football field away (Americans always measure distances by football fields). I have never gotten close enough to see the occupants or even to wave hello.

I see a Mercedes emerge from their driveway every now and then. I guess they wouldn’t want anything to do with me anyway. Their four-car garage is bigger than my bungalow.

So, in conclusion, fuckem all. But it’s kind of sad how unfriendly people are here in the exurbs of New York.

As I noted in a comment to a post by Conny Lundberg who publishes a news-link blog called Life, death and all between:

This ‘Pale Blue Dot’ which hangs by the thinnest of threads in an endless void of blackness is getting smaller and smaller and chances of survival are slim to none. Elon Musk is on the right track with his plan to colonize Mars — but what happens after that? It is impossible and always will be impossible for humans to travel beyond the planets to other galaxies.

The bleak truth is ultimately there is no future for the inhabitants of the Pale Blue Dot — so why the hell can’t we get together and say hello sometime. We’ll all be dead soon.

Header image Ralph Steadman

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