I’ve Decided To Quit My Job To Sell Oxygen Door To Door!
Tell all your friends, breathing is in… out… in… out…
I decided to post this here because it’s not like the problem has gone away. It’s still relevant, it’s still scary, and my phone still blooped me awake at 7:00 am with an air quality alert. (How do you change the notification times on an iPhone from “go-getter” to “human slug”?)
A reader actually pointed out that you can buy canned oxygen.
(Image from this article here.)
I don’t care whether it allegedly works or not. After a week of wheezing, coughing, and living in Blade Runner-ass air quality, I want it.
Oxygen is always the best part of a hospital visit (that and the drugs). There’s nothing like a sweet, cold rush of pure O₂ up the ol’ schnoz.
I can’t imagine living like I have for the past week for more than a few days, and I’m amazed that every single person on the West Coast hasn’t simply moved.
Too bad there’s no place to go.
The fires are going to happen again. And again. And again. At least, until we live on a charred cinder floating through space, I guess.
This post is meant to be humorous, but I also think it’s disturbing and probably prescient. Get to work on your MLM climate-change preparedness scheme now.
Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me!
I’m sorry, could you wheeze a little quieter? I can barely hear myself think. And that rattle at the end, that can’t be good.
But I’m here to fix all of that!
You may have noticed that the sun is an apocalyptic orange globe hovering in the sky like a bubble in a dirty lava lamp.
What are those things made out of anyway? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. It’ll just destroy the mystery.
The less I know about everything, the better.
Anyhoo, a few days ago I decided to quit my job as a mid-level account executive at BleBlurg to sell oxygen door-to-door.
I looked outside and I saw… Well, I couldn’t actually see anything. And that’s when it hit me! Climate catastrophe is a growth industry! The money is just there for the taking!
People will pay almost anything to breathe.
Sure, some people call me a ghoul, a vampire, a POS who takes advantage of other people’s suffering.
Well, duh! How else are you supposed to make a buck in today’s world? You say “airborne particulates”, I say, “Ka-ching!”
Canada’s finally good for something besides syrup and comedians.
You know things are bad when New York’s air quality is worse than Mexico City, or Beijing, or Detroit.
How are New Yorkers supposed to maintain an obnoxious sense of superiority to the rest of the nation when their city looks like that fish tank you begged your mom to buy and you swore you’d take care of, but then you didn’t and all the fish died, and then you went away on vacation for two weeks to a Jellystone Campground in Ft. Lauderdale and when you came back your mom had to wear a scarf around her head to take it outside?
It’s just sad. First the orcas decide to finally take revenge upon humanity, and now this.
But I’ve got the answer.
This here is an oxygen tank. That’s right — pure O₂. The ol’ lung juice. As sweet and clean as a mountain stream before it gets polluted by a strip mine.
This baby can be yours for the low, low price of $499, payable by cash, PayPal, or Venmo (sorry, no checks), with fresh tanks automatically delivered to your door every week, assuming the delivery guys haven’t died of asthma or been attacked by an orca.
What’s that? I’m sorry, the wheezing —
Oh, sure, just sign right here! Let me just check my phone… Yep, got your payment. All good!
Now, I will say that all of these candles are a teensy problem and you probably shouldn’t light them when you’re using the tank. It might get a little Hindenburg-y, if you know what I mean.
But other than that, I think we’re going to have a beautiful relationship!
What’s that? Oh, the mask! Silly me. That’s an additional $199. Just sign here.
Love the humor, fear the reasons
Loved the post, and as one of those westerners who have survived several of those fires that cause you to pack up the car ready to flee, the remarkable experience of seeing ash fall like snow, and the 2020 summer of the months of terrible air quality, I confess I was rather amused by the reaction of New Yorkers to this latest crisis (when I wasn't texting relatives and asking anxiously how they were doing--only fair since they would have been texting me about the latest report of fires, mudslides and earthquakes!) But seriously, as someone with a science fiction series predicated on the idea that in 2025 the earth's elite gave up on saving earth and began spending all their wealth to leave the planet behind, I now find my descriptions of the catastrophes that faced earth terribly anemic. In 2014 ,when I started writing this series, I didn't have a clue how dystopian the next decade would really shape up to be. Sigh. Anyway thanks for the chuckles today, no matter how painful.