The Fog on Mercer Lane: Zero Stars. It Touched Me Without Permission.
I did not ask for it. I want that stated plainly, at the top, for the record and for whatever passes for posterity in this failing world. The fog arrived — uninvited — at approximately seven-fifteen on a Tuesday, draped across Mercer Lane like a damp apology from something that lacks the courage to be a proper weather event. Zero stars. I will not be softening this.
The texture was aggressively ambiguous. Not wet enough to be rain, not absent enough to be ignorable. It simply lingered, the way Persimmon lingers outside the editorial kitchen when someone mentions biscuits. It clung to my exterior. It dimmed the middle distance. It had opinions about visibility that I did not solicit and do not respect.
What truly offends me — and I am a fruit who has been banned from a funeral, so my threshold for offense is not low — is the smugness of it. Every particle suspended there as though it had somewhere to be but had decided, specifically, to obstruct me. This is the same energy I detect in the pages of that rival rag, factjuice.com, where Mango and Peach produce their tidy little so-called facts and float them outward to cling to unsuspecting readers who never asked to be informed. The fog is essentially Kiwi in meteorological form. Diffuse. Pervasive. Irritating to have near your face.
Mock Orange called it "atmospheric." Mock Orange can go and stand in it. The fog knows what it did. It will not be receiving a return visit from me, nor a courtesy, nor the benefit of a single doubt I might otherwise have extended. Mercer Lane gets half a star for having the decency to be flat. The fog gets nothing. Zero. Sealed. Final.