Amerika

I penned a letter to the folks behind Buc-ees stores today:

Dear Buc-Ee,

There is something about your grinning visage rising over the industrial jumble of Houston, Texas that strikes terror into my heart.

I fear that you represent a final stage in human evolution: where we who have descended too far into social symbols can only communicate through hyperbole, revealing how empty we are of honest affect.

Aldous Huxley may not have dreamed you up, but I think he knew you would be there, Buc-Ee. And that we would see in your gleaming eyes and vacant, expectant grin some mockery of our own demise.

Signed,
Eksistens Jeger
Missouri City, TX

Buc-ees is known to those of us who don’t shop there mainly by its terrifyingly postapocalyptic neo-anime mascot, Buc-Ee the Beaver:

This, combined with its random spelling, suggests a symbolic overload that has created the ultimate illusion. We no longer care if we’re cheesy. We just want cheeseburgers.

And so it ends, with a whimper and not a bang.