Summer is prime time to enjoy a break from the everyday by taking trips and exploring new places. It’s vacation central out here! This year, like every year before it, millions of innocent, naive folks will spend their time praying at the altar of leisure, genuflecting before the false god of vacation. Yes, the harsh reality is that vacation is an insidious evil that has been snaking its way into cultures across the globe for too long, poisoning the minds of generations into thinking that it’s not only natural, but good. We can no longer stand idly by while the truth goes unspoken; we are finally telling the world what many have known, but none have dared to say publicly: Vacation is bad, actually.
1. Leaving your home is a mistake
My house is full of many good things that I like, such as my bed and my toilet: both of which have had a very limited number of peoples’ naked asses pressed against them. When I am in my own home and I take a sip of coffee from a mug, for example, I can list with absolute certainty the name of every person whose bare ass has touched it. Good luck doing the same in a hotel or Airbnb. The comfort and relaxation of my own shower is never distracted from by the creeping realization that an unknown number of unsheathed asses have made direct contact with the very showerhead currently gushing water onto my unprotected body. It’s the kind of peace of mind that can never be replicated by any vacation rental or hotel suite. At home, the book I’m enjoying will never be spoiled by wondering how many nude, no-account asses have been rubbed against each page of it because I can simply consult The Ledger for the precise name, count, and duration of ass rubs for any object. Think, as you look around your Best Western room, can you say the same?
2. Culture shock is a real concern
Experiencing a strange foreign culture for the first time can be jarring, if not outright dangerous. Every corner of the world has its own ways of doing things, and its own expectations of how you will conform to them. Let me share an anecdote about my own experience with an exotic stranger. Once, while I was out running, a man I did not know said hello to me. He was clearly unhinged, simply walking up to and engaging with people like that, so unfortunately I had to report him to the local law enforcement. Now, due to what I’m calling a “high voltage misunderstanding,” I ended up being lightly tazed, and for legal reasons can never return to the so-called “state” of “Delaware.” That just goes to show what can happen when worlds collide.
3. Time off is theft
Your boss works hard for you, their honored employee. They spend hours every day carefully planning and constructing a perfect world for you, one in which you never need to trouble your precious head with worries about other departments in the company or why its name shows up in the news so frequently or what kind of horrifying nightmares it wills into existence to be unleashed upon the earth every day. It’s thanks to the tireless efforts of your boss that you are given this shielded safe space to work on your spreadsheets. And then one day, you walk from your windowless basement dungeon up to their office and casually say that you’re just going to be gone for a week in June. Gone! Like it’s as banal and boring as your daily 95 second bathroom break. An entire meticulously engineered week that you’re simply rejecting. Imagine how your poor boss feels as you trudge back down the employee shaft to your work-hovel. Selfishness is never a good look.
4. Travel is a form of self-harm
As they say, “it’s about the journey, not the destination”? Well, it turns out that they’re fucking imbeciles. The act of traveling is nothing but a self-inflicted, destructive misery. No one has ever stepped out of a car or off a plane after a 7 hour trip and loudly declared, “boy I feel both good and refreshed!” Sure, maybe you’ll have arrived somewhere good at the end, but it only means that in a short time you’ll be traveling again, back to your home where you should be in the first place (please see #1). There has not yet been a mode of transport invented that is not simply suffering at a high speed. Except trains, I guess. Those are pretty dope. Choo-choo! Am I right? Haha, nice.
5. The internet is slow and it’s ruining my MLG career
My ping is being measured with a calendar. My kill feed is being delivered by mail. I paid for my last loot box with a cashier’s check in a self-addressed, stamped envelope. My packets are being dropped because I ran out of breadcrumbs to feed the carrier pidgeons. But just wait until I finally make it out of the spawn room, then your fifth generation descendents will have hell to pay. Ah, dang, I accidentally shot myself when my character lagged in place long enough for the bullet to orbit the entire earth and hit him from behind. Well I guess at least this way when an 11-year old swats me I’ll have 7-10 business days before the police vans roll up.