What’s Available for Happy Hour?

“Nothing, happy hour is from four till five.”
“Really?”
“It’s a literal hour.”
“So, by extension all other hours are
unhappy?”
“Not necessarily. There are sad hours, bored
hours, angry hours, even ecstatic hours,
though some forms of ecstasy border on
pain.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks.”

—Jared Joseph

Cowardly New World

There was a time when distraction
could not so easily be grasped,
when time was just time
and the past was just the past,
when places could just be themselves,
unassuming, undefined,
and one’s thoughts kept one to the task;
before the world became enclosed
by wide-openness, constricted
by expansion, where nothing
can just be itself
or forgotten anymore.

—John Tottenham