There are so few things that have upended the modern life as much as the COVID-19 personal pizza has. As the panini has raged on timelessly, all of us have collectively ignored the centuries of technological progress and evolution, opting instead for the ages-old technique of resisting change.

We baked our own bread and jigged to sea shanties from an entirely land-locked state — no, Chatfield and Horsetooth reservoirs don’t count, cease your yammering! 

But as vaccine rollouts and boundless optimism — seriously, where do you people find it? — have declared the pancreas over, cretins left and right have begun the voyage home to that once-wonderful world we call “precedented.” Sheeple have returned in droves to the clubs, to the strip malls and, of course, the Godforsaken travel photos — nobody cares about your uncle’s lake house in Utah, Bethany. 

No, seriously, no one cares. We actually did a survey of everyone, and we decided unanimously that we do not give a damn. Honestly, what kind of a name is “Lake Powell” anyways? And who the hell goes to Utah for a vacation? If you wanted to take a trip to a barren wasteland, might I suggest you venture to that timeless wonder known as Greeley, Colorado?

Also, it’s a reservoir. Not a lake, you nonsensical nitwits. 

Anyway, as people have returned to these perfectly prim and proper pastimes as were once enjoyed, prior to the COVID-19 panda manic, I can’t help but wonder where our faith in the good, old-fashioned, American institution of denial has gone. After all this time spent bunkered in bedrooms and cornered in condominiums, staring at the yellow wallpaper until sanity itself collapses, one must think that we have grown beyond such trivial things like companionship and camaraderie. 

Certainly, after such dysfunction and disarray, there can be only one path forward if we are to find any meaning in the collective suffering at nature’s hands. So, put as simply as possible, don’t go to a club.

Go to the woods, get hammered beyond belief, reject modernity and scream at the moon. Noise ordinances be damned, it is time we all let that stuck-up, spherical entity know how we really feel about it.

Quite frankly, it’s only obvious we should have ventured back into the great unknown. There is nothing quite as American — nay, quite as human — as wailing into the void at anything and everything, with absolutely no regard for whether the void has any desire to hear our mortal screeching. And, knowing full well that we would simply howl into eternity anyway, the sound reverberating off the walls of our own personal echo chambers, naturally we ought to band together and lift up our screams in symphony to chastise the cruel expanse of nature for its treachery, as so perfectly displayed by the year of No Lord, 2020. 

So in the immortal words of the also nearly-immortal Emperor Palpatine, “Do it.” No better way to celebrate the imminent spring season than by raising up your voices to articulately express all of your spite in a tremendous, pristinely feral cacophony.

Editor’s Note: This is a satire for April Fools’ Day. Real names and the events surrounding them may be used in fictitious/semi-fictitious ways. Those who do not read the editor’s notes are subject to being offended.

The Unprecedented Times reporter Nope Parsley can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @PasleyNoah.