Frank was thirty hours into a game of poker when he got the call from his bank. 

“Hi there Mr. Delillo, we’re calling to let you know you’ve overdrawn your account by fifty-two million dollars.”

Frank turned away from the table hunching to say, “don’t worry, I’ve got them on the ropes this time.”

“No sir, you only had four hundred dollars to begin with,” the banker went on.

“I’m holding two-pair here and he’s got nothing. Talk to you later,” Frank whispered over the banker as he hung up the phone and turned his attention back to the game. 

The pot that was being played for was sixty-two dollars. Making matters worse, Frank did not have ‘two-pair’ like he had told the banker. What he actually had was a pair of twos. Meanwhile, the man across from Frank held in his hands a royal flush. 

Frank was not particularly good at poker, nor did he possess a solid understanding of finances. Not only this, he had a tell that gave him away virtually every time he had been dealt a winning hand. It came in the form of fiendish laughter that he could hardly suppress upon seeing a favorable hand.

The frustrated man across from Frank was a seasoned pro in Texas Holdem. He and the menacing scar that ran from his left forehead, through his eye, to the bottom of his chin, had just about seen it all. He raised the stakes, picking up two more red chips from the immense stacks in front of him, tossing them towards the center of the table, refusing to pick up his elbow in the process. 

Frank looked at him suspiciously and turned to the card dealer, “he’s bluffing right?”

The dealer’s eyes widened at the question and the fact that he was face to face with one of the worst players of any game the world had ever seen. 

Across the casino floor, in the high roller section, the drunken billionaire stood up to relieve himself. He too was in the middle of something of a gambling marathon when he was hit with the urge. 

He patted his pockets looking for his hotel room key. It took him some time to check every pocket because of the tens of secret ones expertly hidden in the expensive suit. The billionaire began furiously taking the pockets out as his bladder stretched and bulged to better locate his key so he could use the futuristic, sentient toilet in his presidential suite. 

The emptying of his pockets sent money flying indiscriminately off his person. A golden gambling chip lept its way onto the velvet carpets and rolled past shiny black shoes.

Frank loosened his tie and lowered his head into his folded arms on the table. He wasn’t excited about having to tell his son he couldn’t go to college anymore. Looking at his feet, feeling sorry for himself, he noticed the small golden glow between his feet. 

“One hundred million.”

Was it were to be

In were it of all to see

Alas a lone stone

For sight to be free

Was it we’re all a thingy

A frag of the bone

Now see it to be

It shone through it and was he

With all the fly drone

Be free and go see

All we were was was deadly

A last bemoaned groan 

Twilight will it to go in time and space

We were all that was in this crime and place

It’s not as if I’ve never been to a Shake Shack restaurant. I’ve even been to this one many times before. However, I think this particular lunch is as if I’ve never been to any Shake Shack before, not just this location. The reason for this is because two weeks ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease.

Celiac disease is an immune reaction one’s body has to eating gluten. When someone with the disease eats gluten, their small intestine is destroyed and over time becomes unable to absorb the necessary nutrients for, frankly, survival. For those of you unfamiliar with gluten, it appears in many of the world’s greatest foods therein causing those with Celiac disease to go mentally insane. 

Since receiving my diagnosis, I haven’t been going to my regular food spots because, more often than not, they serve food laced with the harmful gluten chemical. But, after two weeks without a burger, I decided it was time to take the leap of faith. See what gluten-free bread was all about. 

It cost me an extra dollar to order my burger with the gluten-free bun as if I weren’t in enough despair. Frankly, though, I was without choice and ate the extra expense. Then it came time for me to actually try the stuff. Now, no one usually gets excited over the bun when anticipating a burger, but when you find yourself having to eat without it, or with some faux-bread substitute, you find yourself longing for that soft, velvety loaf. 

To add to the strangeness and tension, my burger came encased in a new box, new branding that made my meal feel that little bit more foreign, and due to my unfamiliarity, takes a few extra moments for me to get into it. 

Unwrapped and sitting in front of me, I look at my burger. It is dark and glossy. I poke and prod it a few times. It is hard. I tweeze it with fingers from both hands and pull the top bun ever so slightly apart. It is filled with gaps of air. I can imagine it attached to the back of a scuba diver swimming through a coral reef. 

I open my mouth and raise the burger to my lips. I chomp down and think hard during my first couple of sturdy chews. It’s dry. Is that bitter? Is that sour? It’s dissolving with just the application of my spit. After the next few bites, I sit in mental solitude as I resign myself to a life devoid of real bread. 

In conclusion: Ugh. 

I have no idea if there really is a malevolent Big Brother pulling the strings of news media and political narratives but I do know that Rupert Murdoch exists. A long time ago I read a story written in the New York Times, a detailed history of Murdoch’s rise to the top of corporate media. I’m pretty sure I was in the middle of a process called “coming of age” which is when it’s time for a person to step through the door that leads from childhood to adulthood all the while you’re being dealt sturdy blows to the head and groin that come from either side of said door. It dawned on me that I would become a fully-fledged member of society soon. I’d become a voter. 

I’m pretty sure it’s a citizen’s duty to vote, so I suppose it’s their responsibility to be informed. However, as long as voting is a test with no wrong answer, becoming informed is a study session without a clear start point and no discernable end. This leaves one a lot of room when it comes to the process of learning about social issues.

Now, to become informed, we look to news outlets and journalists to give us the scoop on what senator is cheating with which campaign manager, who Dow Jones is and what it will take for him to be happy, and to keep steady count of the doomsday clock. 

There’s a lot of jungle to whack through just to figure out what issues are being decided on and what you can do to help accomplish what you want. Oh yeah! What do you want? You have some vague notion of what it is. You heard something about inflation the other day right before driving your head into the sand. As you wipe sand out of your eyes while watching CNBC you start to understand that inflation isn’t very good and that something caused it. You nod to yourself and resolve that you’ve earned a cookie. Whenever you do feel like you’ve brushed up enough on your city’s housing policies to make an informed ballot decision, you sip your coffee, unfold the newspaper and find out the goalposts were moved in the night and the opinions you’ve formed somehow spells destruction of humanity.

Both the desire to understand and the anxiety that society gives me have taught me to treat all “news” with at least some level of skepticism before I can fact-check it in one way or another. Then after that, if I can’t come to a conclusion regarding the issue, I decide it might have something to do with an old man in a control tower who owns a business and makes money the more viewers he has.

News is flawed, but we as humans are necessarily imperfect. If we weren’t we wouldn’t have social issues, and if we didn’t have those we wouldn’t need news. It’s an individual’s chore and privilege to think for themself.