Highspeed Collision on Peachtree Street
Warning, living in ATL may be hazardous to your health.
One afternoon I was walking down Peachtree Street. And up ahead of me was a man, clearly homeless, occasionally stopping to dig through open-top trashcans.
I watched as he pulled out a half-empty (or half-full) bottle of beer from the trashcan, taking a nice big slurp of The yellow liquid.
I can only imagine how it tasted - sitting in the hot Atlanta sun all day - fermenting in garbage. As I write this I wonder… what kind of person previously drank from that bottle? What kind of diseases does this mystery person have?
And then I think to myself. What’s the likelihood that the yellow liquid in that bottle wasn’t beer at all? But actually the dehydrated urine of another homeless guy?
A moment later, as the homeless man stood in the middle of the sidewalk, spitting the beer back unto the ground, a high-powered electric rent-a-scooter rushed right past me at an incredible speed, colliding with the bum and knocking him on his ass.
The combination of these events made me finally realize the truth. That this city is a procedurally generated absurdist sketch comedy show, made up of hundreds of thousands of pre-programed cartoon characters.
I can’t walk two blocks without some freak stopping me, giving their entire backstory, and then asking me to complete a side quest. Where the fuck did I move to? The setting of a Bethesda RPG?! Every time you go to a grocery store, or a gym, or anywhere in Atlanta, there’s a 30% that someone in the store is going to get nose-to-nose with an employee, screaming, threatening to fight the general manager. I dub these random encounters as “Atlanta Moments.”
I wonder how much longer it’ll be until I start creating my own Atlanta Moments?
Boundary Break the modern world
You must assume the role of “Player Character.” The world is not an MMORPG. It’s single player. An open world adventure game with endless possiblilities. Permadeath enabled…
YOU are the only person in control. Everyone else is an NPC. You’re special. You’re intelligent. You’re going far in this world. Life’s gonna take you for a wild ride. And you’ll love every nanosecond of it. I’m talking level 100. Badass loot. Beating the final boss and completeing every side quest.
With this being said… What are you doing with your save file? I see you… I can see you reading this blog… I can see through the camera on your device. I can hear you breathing through the micophrone I’ve planted underneath your skin… What are you doing with your life? What have you done today? How many sidequests have you booked up? How many mission objectives have you checked off? ANY OF THEM?
Walk up to people on the street and start asking questions. Drive around town aimlessly; looking for the next adventure.
Dial phone numbers at random and talk to strangers for as long as possible.
Pretend to be lost and ask for directions to a place you already know.
Run up to homeless people and ask them for money.
Ask to bum a cig for someone. Put it in your pocket. And then pull out a cigar. Smoke the entire thing in under five minutes. This is your challenege for today. If you throw up you must smoke another one. Bonus XP if you can do all of this in front of the smoker.
Walk into a fishshop on the eastside of Atlanta. Ask the cashier if he’s “Heard any good rumors?”
New Website
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