Yesterday (a variable context depending on when you read this), I was "thinking" and realized how grateful I am for Concrete Sidewalks and Asphalt Roads. It seems like eons ago that we relied on live baby mice and hydrocephalic tapirs to coat our walkways. No longer do we shake and cry with each step and skid in gore when braking hard. This is a salute to progress. 🫡
Let us not mince words: the Old Ways were sticky, noisy, and frankly, a nightmare for municipal sanitation. Who among us over the age of thirty doesn't remember the terrible, rhythmic squeaking of the morning commute? Walking to the squalor-pits meant stepping carefully on tiny, squirming rodents, hoping you wouldn't puncture a tapir bulb and end up covered in high-pressure cerebrospinal fluid before your second mug of swamp-coffee. The traction was appalling. Stopping a heavy iron battle-cart required a minimum of fifty feet and left a streak of viscera that took weeks to wash out of the gutters.
Enter modern civil engineering.
When the Department of Urban Decay first proposed pouring liquid stone and petroleum sludge over our sacred dirt tracks, the purists howled. "It lacks texture!" they cried. "How will we track our enemies if they don't leave bloody footprints?" But look at us now.
Concrete Sidewalks have revolutionized pedestrian life across the warrens. They are flat, cool to the touch, and perfect for sharpening rusty daggers while sitting on the curb. They offer a predictable, non-yielding surface that doesn't attempt to bite your toes through your worn-out burlap boots. Furthermore, the light gray finish provides a wonderful canvas for public announcements, chalk threat-lists, and the occasional territorial smear.
Asphalt Roads, on the other hand, represent the peak of heavy-duty goblin transport. Sleek, pitch-black, and pleasantly warm under the midday sun, asphalt can handle the crushed-weight of fully loaded wolf-wagons, siege engines, and erratic subterranean beetles without turning into a slurry of squished organs. When you slam on the handbrake today, you hear a sharp, satisfying screech of rubber—not a wet, agonizing squeal that haunts your dreams for a fortnight.
Of course, a few elder goblins still wax poetic about the "supple shock absorption" of a double-layered rodent pathway. But nostalgia is a trap. I, for one, prefer my shoes un-soiled and my stopping distance predictable.
So, the next time you step out of your hovel and onto a solid, inanimate slab of aggregate, take a moment to look down. Give a little nod to the engineers who traded squish for stability. Progress isn't always shiny—sometimes it's just dry, gray, and delightfully devoid of nervous systems.
