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Dear Alien Archeologists, Please Study My Trash
Two thousand years from now, when a group of adventuring Venusians land on a faraway planet called Earth, they will find a bombed out world that is strangely bucolic, full of weeds and irradiated flowers and pigeon-sized fireflies and tangerine-colored worms. As these curious aliens poke around, they will find evidence of the beings called humans that used to dominate this once-great planet. Eventually, while boring holes into the ground, they will come across a collection of 21st century ephemera, which I once kept on the mantle above my fireplace, a group of items that I called my Objects of Honor.
The honorable objects I’ve left for the Venusians, which you could also find in my apartment in 2021, include a Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark Playbill, a can of Alita: Battle Angel Arizona iced tea, a can of Cyberpunk: 2077 Rockstar energy drink, a tube of Wendy’s Baconator Pringles, a VHS of Vanilla Sky starring Tom Cruise, a bag of Marvel-branded Dole celery hearts, the wrapper from a Call of Duty Totino’s party pizza, a five-and-a-half-foot-long CVS receipt, a box of High-Protein Muscle Macaroni and Cheese, and more.
This pile of inscrutable consumerist trash will have miraculously survived the fires that wiped out the human race and the majority of our garbage because it was buried deep underground in an asbestos-lined time capsule…
