Are you feeling it? That tinge of tension in air, inducing a faint sense of uneasiness. You can’t quite sense how or why you feel this way. But it’s there, ominously whispering in your ear as you try to fall asleep at night and greeting you with a flash of dread as soon as you wake up in the morning.
That feeling, my friends, is our collective sixth senses warning us that society is on the brink of collapse. Ever see those videos of animals reacting to earthquakes seconds or even minutes before they actually commence? Humans have that sense, too. We’re just conditioned to ignore it.
Not me. When I’ve got that distinct feeling of a pit lingering in my stomach, I stop what I’m doing and contemplate the reason why.
We all know the pandemic has thrown society into disarray. Politics, economics, work, leisure–everything in our daily purview has been tested, bent, and in many instances broken.
Familiar headlines throughout the past year have detailed the various industries that are now grotesque facsimiles of their former selves. Lumber? May as well build your house out of gold. Computer chips? May as well buy your GPU or used car or gaming console on the black market. Water? Well if you’re on the West Coast, baby, get on your knees and start worshiping Nestle, your new overlord.
However, it was a combination of two things last week that ominously sent my Spidey senses into overdrive. The first was the headline that Taco Bell is facing a nationwide shortage of supplies and ingredients. “Sorry if we can’t feed your current crave. Due to national ingredient shortages and delivery delays, we may be out of some items,” said Taco Bell’s statement on the matter.
“Some items” includes beef, chicken, hot sauce and 10-inch tortillas. Yeah, we’re not exactly talking saffron or white truffles here. Beef … chicken … hot sauce … tortillas.
Fortunately, I can exist without Taco Bell just fine. But you know what I CANNOT exist without? It just so happens to be the second aforementioned item(s) that unexpectedly turned my world upside down: buffalo wings with blue cheese.
That’s right, our nation is the victim of a national wing shortage. A few weeks ago, my local restaurant’s wing night was effectively cancelled. No wings. They offered boneless wings as a substitute, but let’s be real. Boneless wings are nothing more than sauced chicken nuggets. So no, I won’t be paying good money to eat like a kindergartner.
Last week I returned to the restaurant in order to get my badly needed wing fix. They had bone-in wings this time, albeit at a 50% markup from their usual price. But guess what? No blue cheese. Let me repeat that: THEY WERE OUT OF BLUE CHEESE.
Indeed, the chicken situation I can at least understand. Everyone and their grandmother is sucking down buffalo wings these days like never before. To add insult to injury, Tyson even screwed up the chicken supply chain this year by introducing poorly performing roosters into their breeding operations.
But blue cheese?! What now, are we running low on cows? Milk? Farmers? Moldy cheese? A combination thereof? All of the above?
Whatever the case me be, I cannot stomach this situation anymore. Mad Max hellscape, here we come. Time to hoard toilet paper and gasoline. Oh wait, that’s already happened …
Guess that certain “sometime in the near future” timeline we so often see in movies is already here.
