Hating the young

You young people, with your healthy bodies and, worse, decades of time before you, time that will bring bad things to the planet and everything living on it, but time that will also see innovations that will extend your lives to as far as human life can go, a not agreed on figure but a figure that may reach a century-and-a-half by the time you arrive there. Time that will cure conditions like the one I have, which will soon take my leg and then, very likely, my life.

A hawk soars overhead.

Humankind is on the cusp of this. The gloom we see now, particularly in the United States, will prove to be a blip, an aberration. Americans will come to their senses and again invest in their nation's future and extend its beneficence to all around the world.
It's awful to know you're going to die during a political and cultural downturn, but as death approaches that will take a place far down the ladder of my concerns.

Christmas 2015

The Loser got these an hour ago. They're gone now. He ate them to try to fill a hole in his miserable, lonely life.

It is warm and sticky where the Complete and Total Loser lives, which is on the northern East Coast of the United States. It has yet to go down to freezing. There are bugs everywhere, new growth on plants. Earthworms are rioting in the streets after yet more rain. The humidity makes the Loser feel the bacteria clinging to his face, which is oily even though he's in late middle age. His sole gift has been a tin of nuts from a friend, and he's grateful to get it as he's unemployed again. A neighbor just gave him cookies, which he will eat even though he doesn't need them. Meanwhile, the Loser has a splitting headache and a bad cold and he's exhausted.