ANDY ROONEY 2.0

Once upon a time we were supposed to pity the Soviet Bloc for their empty store shelves, left barren by their refusal to participate in consumer capitalism. Now American consumer capitalism has produced something beyond empty shelves: shelves filled with manufactured nothingness.

I'd looked at this pattern before, over and over, but not properly seen it: the pavement looked like a window screen—maybe it always had? Maybe I had been looking at it all my life without seeing it.