PORTLAND, ME—Conceding that they had been piling up lately in an unsustainable way, the world’s issues, domestic and international, reportedly came to a halt Wednesday so that local woman Patricia Hanlon could deal with her own problems. “We didn’t mean to add more to your plate, Patty—we’ll take a break, and you figure out your own stuff, okay?” said the collective issues of climate change, human-trafficking, nuclear proliferation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, democratic backsliding, the erosion of voting rights in the American South, tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa, economic inequality, the Yemeni genocide, creeping authoritarianism, global alcoholism, countless refugee crises, mass extinction, the Chinese detention of Uyghurs, animal welfare, domestic abuse, pornography addiction, the struggling film industry, and gender inequality, among numerous others, which admitted that it wasn’t fair to the 28-year-old woman not to give her space and time to live her own life. “Look, we know we’re a lot to take in, and you have enough to contend with. You have to finish out work through the holidays, and then there’s all that stressful travel. Plus, you have books to catch up on. As of now, we’re on a hiatus. Seriously: Go to the gym. Watch some movies. Cook something new. We’ll be here when you get back.” At press time, the halt to the world’s most pressing issues had reportedly gone completely unobserved after Hanlon spent the entire day growing increasingly fixated on an annoying email from her supervisor.
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