Brief Disclaimer: I started this post pre-pandemic, but a tremendous lack of will and fortitude caused it to stall. I have now reignited the blog due to the fact that I have actually run out of ways to procrastinate. I tried to learn guitar, got frustrated and quit, tried to learn again, quit again. Will it happen a third time? One thing’s for sure: maybe.
The blog was on deaths door, and the only thing that could bring it back was a pandemic that led to an extended quarantine that made me so bored that I eventually came crawling back. So here we are. The issue with this post is that it does not at all apply to the times we’re living in now with everything shut down. I considered this, but couldn’t think of anything better to write about. Think of this as a look toward the future, when we will be grateful to have our annoyingly crowded Starbuckses back.
See you in 2023.
We’ve all been there. You’re wandering around with an awkward amount of time to kill, but don’t feel like doing anything actually interesting or productive. You stroll aimlessly until you see that familiar green mermaid, her bendy legs/fins beckoning you to grab a scone and just chill. Starbucks has somehow become the destination de jour of people looking to kill time. It’s impossible to go into one and not see that one guy sitting at a table, no drink or snack in sight, zoning out like there’s no tomorrow. And when I see that guy two questions always pop into my head: A) Just how long has this dude been sitting there? and, B) How does he not have literally anything else to do?
This is not to shit on zone out dude. I’ve been zone out dude. Sometimes it all becomes too much and you need to just stare at a wall. I get it. Here’s the problem: there are too many of us now. And it’s not just the zone out dudes. There’s the classic Bored, Gazing At Phone While Slowing Sipping An Iced Latte Over The Course Of Two Hours girl, and of course, Laptop Open With A Bunch Of Paper Scattered Around So You Think He’s Working But He’s Definitely Just Been Dicking Around Online The Whole Time guy. Add them all up and finding an open seat is the equivalent of Charlie Bucket finding a golden ticket. Starbucks is basically a shelter for bored rich people at this point. Is this a bad thing? Not really… but it is kind of weird. Clearly we are in desperate need of more places to hang out and/or chill. Also, we need to keep in mind the people who actually use Starbucks for its intended purpose, like the nurse coming off a 30-hour shift who just wants to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee in peace before having to go home to her family, but she can’t because every table is occupied by people solemnly eating cake pops. Here is a list of ways people can kill time other than being at Starbucks. Most of them are dumb and would never work.
Make Dunkin Donuts A Place You Don’t Want To Leave Immediately After Making Your Purchase
Let’s be real, Dunkin is basically a walk-in drive through, nobody is hanging out in there any longer than they absolutely have to. So maybe if they get some non-hard plastic chairs and work on that overall depressing esthetic, they could thin the masses over at their biggest competitor.
Pros: Not only thins the Starbucks herd, but lessens the number of annoying Starbucksy people and turn them into salt of the earth Dunkinites. The masses rejoice.
Cons: To everyone’s horror it turns out salt of the earth Dunkinites are actually just Masshole douchebags, whose numbers quickly multiply out of control until eventually we are forced to abolish New England from the United States like we always secretly wanted to.
Have All Movie Tickets Cost Six Dollars
Things everyone knows: Movie theatres are unfortunately dying a slow painful death due to on demand options, and AMC Discount Tuesdays are awesome. Let’s gets some butts in seats. While we’re here, make baseball games free and all slam poetry events negative twenty dollars.
Pros: You now don’t have to wait until National Treasure 3 is on TV to see it, get the unbridled joy of watching Nic Cage break into the Statue of Liberty’s left eyeball to find Ben Franklin’s long-lost key to the secret vault underneath the Lincoln Memorial that contains documents proving that Uncle Sam was Cage’s actual great-great-great uncle on the big screen.
Cons: You said fuck it, sure I’ll see the rerelease of Cats. Why did you do that? You ask yourself this question during sleepless nights for the rest of your life.
Outlets In Parks
It’s not only people with nothing to do clogging up the Bucks, it’s the low phone charge crowd who are itching like Tyrone Biggums for a little outlet juice. Yes that is my second straight post with a Tyrone Biggums reference. I will not apologize. To give these people a new home for their fix, I propose putting electrical outlets in park benches.
Pros: Breathing the fresh air and seeing children frolic helps remind these screen addicts that they were once happy in their life.
Cons: Children get an up-close look at the corporate automatons they will one day inevitably become, hot lava monster becomes less fun.
Rentable Lawn Chairs
CitiBike but with foldable lawn chairs instead of bikes. Basically there are racks of foldout chairs every few blocks, you pay a bit to rent one and boom you’re chillin like a villian for the next several hours.
Pros: When people walking by inevitably ask you why you didn’t just find a bench to sit on, you get to blow off steam by being overly defensive and hostile toward them because deep down you know they are right and you are filled with shame for making this ill-advised purchase.
Cons: CitiChair gets too popular, city sidewalks become jammed with chair people, turf war ensues between the chair people and the jogger community, the battle comes to a head when a chair lady brandishing a knife gets blasted directly in the face with the full contents of a fire extinguisher. Too soon?
Bring Back Pokemon Go
The break glass in case of emergency option.
Pros: “Yo holy shit dude there’s a Venusaur like eight blocks from here we can catch it if we hurry!”
Cons: That moment of clarity when you’re chasing after a fantasy video game creature alongside 500 other people and you ask yourself:
Create More Space To Hang Out In College Bookstores
The only actually legitimate idea on this list. College bookstores are usually awesome, not only having a huge variety of books but often music, coffee shops, and an insane amount of college apparel that is fun to browse and make fun of, such as “who in god’s name is buying these University of Delaware BabyBjorns?” The problem is there’s never enough seating at these things, it’s always like six to eight sweet leather chairs with everyone else forced to stand around like rubes. I’m looking at you, all the people reading this who have some authority over the amount of seating at college bookstores. Fix it, and generations of people with jack shit to do will be in your debt.
Pickup Lawn Games
If I had to kill time in a perfect world, I would head over to the closest basketball court and just start dunking on fools in pickup. Sadly in this imperfect world, I suck and can barely touch rim. The good news for unathletic white guys like me: lawn games exist. Pickup lawn games should be a thing, with designated setups in parks for croquet, cornhole, badminton, spikeball, horseshoes, bocce ball and lawn darts even though I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in most states. This would be awesome except that all the stuff would for sure get stolen in like five seconds, so then you have to keep in in a secure locked area when it’s not being used, so then it has to be like the CitiChair thing where you have a membership and then can have access whenever you want. I need to work out the kinks but I am all in on this idea and honestly might quit my job to make it a thing nationwide.
Pros: Allows people to pretend they are getting a workout in as they throw a pouch of sand through a wooden hole. Also serves as definitive proof that Lawn on D is an unironically fun place to hang out. Don’t @ me.
Cons: The cornhole and spikeball hardos would make it untenable. There’s simply no way around this and it makes me sad.
Worldwide Pandemic Eliminates Need To Leave Home
Well played, Mother Earth.
Cons: Many die, economic devastation.
Pros: Starbucks less crowded.
Maybe Instead Of Being So Worried Killing Time, We Should Be Using The Time We Have To Grow As People. At Some Point We All Realize Life Is Short, And I Probably Should Have Spent More Time Bettering Myself And A Bit Less Time Going Down YouTube Rabbit Holes Of People Brawling At Denny’s. Try Going To A Part Of Town You’ve Never Visited Before, Learn About Its History And The People Who Live There. Visit A Museum And Stumble Upon A Piece of Art That Speaks To You, Discover An Ancient Culture That Fascinates You. Stop By A Nursing Home And Speak With The Residents There, Listen To Their Stories And Take In The Wisdom They Impart From A Lifetime Of Experiences. Let’s Be The People Who Are Not Afraid To Go Outside Our Comfort Zone, Outside Our Little Bubble Of Self, And Maybe We Will Learn A Thing Or Two About Life We Didn’t Know Before, Kernels Of Insight That We May Collect And One Day Pass Down To Our Children. And As We Go Through Life Growing And Learning, We Just Might Accidentally Create A World That Is A Bit More Enlightened, A Bit More Open, And A Bit More Just Than It Was Before.
jk lol
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