"I’m not the only one who has trouble processing current events and finding them relevant to my lived experience. People keep saying we’re living in a movie. They mean an apocalypse movie, which isn’t quite right. The bodies are still piling up but only in photos, not on my block. But it’s true that our lives have been generously imbued with movie logic – the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, not experimental films – that special plot accelerator that traffics in the assumption that a series of decisions made in a 24-72 hour period will dramatically change your life. In an action or horror movie, your choices eventually kill everyone you know. In a comedy or drama, what you do results in marriage, divorce, unemployment, friends, or friendlessness (never for long though). In every movie there’s a chance to throw it all away. You lose it all and subsequently realize you didn’t need the things you lost, or win it all, only to have someone threaten to take it away from you, so just be more diligent, and you can keep it"