The Collidescope

The hurricane has been upgraded to Category E or Level Orange or to the Fifth Tier or Echelon or Whichever Unit They’ve Invented to Measure the Combination of Wind Speed and Irrationality. At this point evacuations are highly recommended which makes you actually consider evacuating which would never happen if the evacuation were mandatory because what word inspires defiance quite like the word mandatory? This storm is undeniably strong however, so strong that every channel on TV is showing the Yule Log. You actually like the windows all boarded up. It’s comforting. The eye of the storm will not look down upon you until early tomorrow morning and so you decide to devote this time to doing something responsible like catching up on emails.

Some things are fashionable, others not. Those things that are fashionable now might not be fashionable later on today, around teatime. It is generally objects that are or are not fashionable, but sometimes it is attributes, ethics, definitions. Language is at the moment rather fashionable. I am talking to you and you understand. You slowly nod your head, your fashionable head. Your nod is benign. Heads are still fashionable. An assegai, less so. Electricity is currently fashionable. Mammoths, unfortunately not. I am walking on the central reservation of a busy road and I ask myself: how stylish is this? Trucks pass, fashionable and not gauche.