Cross Animals
You arrive at a deserted island. It's just you and a tent, with no civilization in sight. The only other things on it are some trees, weeds, bugs. There are rivers you can't cross and cliffs you can't climb. But think positive, it's your chance at a new life! ... says Tom Nook, a chubby racoon with a business plan, and a guinea pig (that's you) for a customer.
You are tossed out of your office with less than a week to prepare. The same goes for your children, whose school doors are shut, then locked, then bolted. You all arrive, things in hand, at a new frontier, one you've known all along. It's your house, only now it becomes your own new deserted island, where you are imprisoned 24/7 for the unforseeable future. Welcome to the great social work from home experiment, where you and your whole state are guinea pigs.
Slowly, friends trickle in - Phoebe, a bird, and Rory, a weight lifting lion. You make jokes about tent life and make plans to upgrade your standards of living.
Suddenly, your computer springs to life at all times of the day, with kids' classes, other parents panicking, coworkers dragging you into endless meetings, friends and family checking in. It is weird. We try not to talk about the virus, until there is nothing left to talk about, and all we talk about is the virus. Your baby's daycare teacher caught it and was sick for weeks. Finally you make jokes about your kids crawling on you while you work. It'll be fine, we are fine.
"DIY" - a technique you learn of hammering the flotsam and jetsom around the place together to make flimsy tools and furniture - becomes a very important method of passing time and staying solvent. Somehow you've been roped into this experiment with a debt you must pay off. You pay your ransom by collecting shells and catching bugs, and hard work mining and foresting. You should probably be indignant but it's actually pretty fun. You make fishing rods from twigs, shovels from hardwood, bait from clams you dig on the beach. Finally you pay your 'moving fee', but just as you taste freedom, you get sick of living in a tent and aquire a house, complete with a big mortgage you must once again work to pay off.
The first several weeks, before you figure out how to get things delivered, you are finding unexpected value out of every scrap of detrius from around the house. You cobble together a treehouse from old cardboard boxes, a drumset from empty cans, make a scale model solar system out of butcher paper, aquariums from cereal boxes. You are simultaneously in awe with yourself and starting to crack.
Now that you have a real house, not a tent, you discover that mining and DIY in and of themselves are not enough, there is a currency called Bells and you are expected to use it, otherwise Tom may come a knockin' and foreclose on your ass. Luckily, many random items around the island can be sold to the single store on the island (monopoly alert!) for said Bells. One day, the store moves to a separate location! And wow, really cute stuff is in there. You start collecting items that you secretly adore, putting off your mortgage payments to get a giant stereo, and a chair shaped like a peach.
Now that you realized you need to spend about three times as much as usual on groceries, but not much on anything else, you tentatively make some non-essential purchases. They cost money. You fight with your spouse over your right to use your own money, a big ugly fight that had actually been brewing for years. When the smoke finally clears, your astute toddler summarizes it in a quiet voice.
"Daddy was mean to you". Mmhmm. "and you cried and slammed the door," Mmmhmm. "and you talked to daddy and looked out the window," mmhmmm, "and then you were hugging and not fighting anymore". Yes dear. Well, it was productive. You have a better relationship for it and now you are free to spend your hard-earned bells as you please. You deck your house with nice bedding, art, and a million plants. It looks a lot like your game...
You have made tools (ladders and vaulting poles) that let you roam free over your island, but you need more materials to make real furniture so you're not sleeping on a sleeping bag in your nice new house. Luckily an airline opens just as you are getting annoyed with the lack of materials. Hello to island-hopping! You board a small aircraft that takes you to a randomly generated neighboring island. Not much is over there, but there are some resources you can't get at home, new types of trees, different flowers, occasionally even different animal friends you haven't met before. You are so smitten with new social contact you consider inviting them to move in with you.
By the middle of May, they are taking down the field hospital at Central Park across the street from Mt. Sinai. The navy hospital boat has long since floated away, and you are both encouraged and deeply depressed when you look out the window and watch hundreds of people walk along the East River. How can you possibly keep six feet away from people at all times in a packed city of eight million? Finally your family has had enough. You book a ZipCar and escape for weekend trips - to the Catskills, to Long Island, to Montauk. There is not much to do, but any kind of nature is such a literal God-send, you see plants for the miracle they are, and so do your children. You see new people on your trips! Even though your don't interact, you rejoice hearing other happy human voices right in the flesh, not over distorted computer speakers.
Finally, you've paid off your mortgage - congratulations! But did you know that your island only has a one (* . . . .) star rating? It doesn't have enough fencing, bridges, and needs to be decorated from head to toe, or 'stream to sea'. Better get on that! Ok, ok. So you build a bridge, decorate around it. Hey, everyone comes out to celebrate! They bust out the fireworks and do a happy dance.
It's the very end of May. We have stayed home, failed to find masks, found masks. We have worked from home and did a pretty crappy job. We have tried to keep our kids fed, ourselves sane, and them educated, but usually only manage two out of three on any given day. But thanks to the hard effort of NYC civilians, New York City is about to lift curfew!
Oh wait. We are finally unteathered from the pitiless gravity of the socioeconomic engine that we are able to be active citizens. That and being glued to social media 24/7, we actually start paying attention. Enormous problems have been swept under the rug for hundreds of years, and now the virus forced us to move the rug a bit - thousands of cockroaches are surging into plain sight. So many police are actually murderers! So many systems are actually murderous machines! You attend a protest, then the city is put back on probation, enforced by callous police. Your country has a one (* . . . .) star rating. Oh no! Better get on that! All of June, people light fireworks, to "celebrate".
You are tossed out of your office with less than a week to prepare. The same goes for your children, whose school doors are shut, then locked, then bolted. You all arrive, things in hand, at a new frontier, one you've known all along. It's your house, only now it becomes your own new deserted island, where you are imprisoned 24/7 for the unforseeable future. Welcome to the great social work from home experiment, where you and your whole state are guinea pigs.
Slowly, friends trickle in - Phoebe, a bird, and Rory, a weight lifting lion. You make jokes about tent life and make plans to upgrade your standards of living.
Suddenly, your computer springs to life at all times of the day, with kids' classes, other parents panicking, coworkers dragging you into endless meetings, friends and family checking in. It is weird. We try not to talk about the virus, until there is nothing left to talk about, and all we talk about is the virus. Your baby's daycare teacher caught it and was sick for weeks. Finally you make jokes about your kids crawling on you while you work. It'll be fine, we are fine.
"DIY" - a technique you learn of hammering the flotsam and jetsom around the place together to make flimsy tools and furniture - becomes a very important method of passing time and staying solvent. Somehow you've been roped into this experiment with a debt you must pay off. You pay your ransom by collecting shells and catching bugs, and hard work mining and foresting. You should probably be indignant but it's actually pretty fun. You make fishing rods from twigs, shovels from hardwood, bait from clams you dig on the beach. Finally you pay your 'moving fee', but just as you taste freedom, you get sick of living in a tent and aquire a house, complete with a big mortgage you must once again work to pay off.
The first several weeks, before you figure out how to get things delivered, you are finding unexpected value out of every scrap of detrius from around the house. You cobble together a treehouse from old cardboard boxes, a drumset from empty cans, make a scale model solar system out of butcher paper, aquariums from cereal boxes. You are simultaneously in awe with yourself and starting to crack.
Now that you have a real house, not a tent, you discover that mining and DIY in and of themselves are not enough, there is a currency called Bells and you are expected to use it, otherwise Tom may come a knockin' and foreclose on your ass. Luckily, many random items around the island can be sold to the single store on the island (monopoly alert!) for said Bells. One day, the store moves to a separate location! And wow, really cute stuff is in there. You start collecting items that you secretly adore, putting off your mortgage payments to get a giant stereo, and a chair shaped like a peach.
Now that you realized you need to spend about three times as much as usual on groceries, but not much on anything else, you tentatively make some non-essential purchases. They cost money. You fight with your spouse over your right to use your own money, a big ugly fight that had actually been brewing for years. When the smoke finally clears, your astute toddler summarizes it in a quiet voice.
"Daddy was mean to you". Mmhmm. "and you cried and slammed the door," Mmmhmm. "and you talked to daddy and looked out the window," mmhmmm, "and then you were hugging and not fighting anymore". Yes dear. Well, it was productive. You have a better relationship for it and now you are free to spend your hard-earned bells as you please. You deck your house with nice bedding, art, and a million plants. It looks a lot like your game...
You have made tools (ladders and vaulting poles) that let you roam free over your island, but you need more materials to make real furniture so you're not sleeping on a sleeping bag in your nice new house. Luckily an airline opens just as you are getting annoyed with the lack of materials. Hello to island-hopping! You board a small aircraft that takes you to a randomly generated neighboring island. Not much is over there, but there are some resources you can't get at home, new types of trees, different flowers, occasionally even different animal friends you haven't met before. You are so smitten with new social contact you consider inviting them to move in with you.
By the middle of May, they are taking down the field hospital at Central Park across the street from Mt. Sinai. The navy hospital boat has long since floated away, and you are both encouraged and deeply depressed when you look out the window and watch hundreds of people walk along the East River. How can you possibly keep six feet away from people at all times in a packed city of eight million? Finally your family has had enough. You book a ZipCar and escape for weekend trips - to the Catskills, to Long Island, to Montauk. There is not much to do, but any kind of nature is such a literal God-send, you see plants for the miracle they are, and so do your children. You see new people on your trips! Even though your don't interact, you rejoice hearing other happy human voices right in the flesh, not over distorted computer speakers.
Finally, you've paid off your mortgage - congratulations! But did you know that your island only has a one (* . . . .) star rating? It doesn't have enough fencing, bridges, and needs to be decorated from head to toe, or 'stream to sea'. Better get on that! Ok, ok. So you build a bridge, decorate around it. Hey, everyone comes out to celebrate! They bust out the fireworks and do a happy dance.
It's the very end of May. We have stayed home, failed to find masks, found masks. We have worked from home and did a pretty crappy job. We have tried to keep our kids fed, ourselves sane, and them educated, but usually only manage two out of three on any given day. But thanks to the hard effort of NYC civilians, New York City is about to lift curfew!
Oh wait. We are finally unteathered from the pitiless gravity of the socioeconomic engine that we are able to be active citizens. That and being glued to social media 24/7, we actually start paying attention. Enormous problems have been swept under the rug for hundreds of years, and now the virus forced us to move the rug a bit - thousands of cockroaches are surging into plain sight. So many police are actually murderers! So many systems are actually murderous machines! You attend a protest, then the city is put back on probation, enforced by callous police. Your country has a one (* . . . .) star rating. Oh no! Better get on that! All of June, people light fireworks, to "celebrate".
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