All Write, Already!

I can't say this was new, but nothing's new these days. I reached down and picked up a week-old paper and saw my name on it. Herald, it said. My paper. The stories in it were all the same blah blah blah, just as I like it. A wry smile, and then gone. Crumpled.

Several years ago I realized that all papers everywhere were new things in the world, geologically speaking. Nowhere had mountains of unrecycled newsprint been known in all of history until the invention of bleached paper, petrochemical ink and buried trash come together. Three rivers of burnable, buryable unliving carbonaceous pre-tar, come together. One day the aliens may extract it and accelerate the burning and turn it to new smog.

Kind of takes the blush off the rose.