In case you weren’t aware, the world is disastrously close to blowing itself up, at least according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and their Doomsday Clock.
The clock is meant to represent the danger of a global catastrophe happening based on current world affairs. Between Iran shooting down a commercial airplane after the US killed their top military general, and a deadly contagious virus that reportedly started from people eating bat soup, I’d say the Bulletin have made a pretty good assessment of where we are on the danger scale.
Plus Australia is literally on fire. All of it is really depressing.
It all pales in comparison, however, to one tragic event that happened this week. An event so devastating, it sent ripples through society as a whole. That unfortunate event was the death of Mr. Peanut who fell off a cliff and exploded (along with his peanut van).
The outpouring on social media was overwhelming, and fellow brands made sure to join the conversation so that everyone could react and drop some distressing brand puns if they wanted:
And my favourite (and sans pun):
It turns out that your favourite breakfast cereals can feel grief.
The death of Mr. Peanut all but confirms what I think we already know: we have become so beyond unstable as a species that just maybe we have actually earned our 100 seconds to midnight status. We make-believe characters who we then kill off so that during the Superbowl we can announce that they weren’t really dead, all in an effort to sell more peanuts.
What else can cartoon characters feel? Why can’t I just be tricked into buying something the old fashioned way by marketers? There is nothing that suggests that The Beaverton isn’t far off with the below.
All I know is, considering all of this, Ottawa’s LRT should have it’s own character avatar. Like some sort of bumbling, fumbling, smiling train that is so daft that it rips wires off itself and then asks us if we’re mad.
One last Mr. Peanut tweet. This one sounds sexual (and by the way, I found it because it was a promoted Tweet, meaning that KRAFT paid for this tweet so that I could see it faster).
God speed everyone, because we may only have 100 proverbial seconds left to enjoy this mess.
The Jabroni Journey 