When the Wi-Fi is down / Time to ponder the orb
A Pondering My Orb post.
It's 1:30 in the morning. You are lying in bed scrolling a stranger's kitchen renovation, photo by photo. You don't want a new kitchen. You can't stop. The microwave says 0:12. You stand in front of it and watch the plate turn for all twelve seconds, with the focus of someone reading their own future. You've opened the fridge for the third time in ten minutes. Nothing new has appeared. You keep looking anyway, in case the cheese has changed its mind. The kettle's on, the email's half written, and you've spent nine minutes gazing out of the window at a pigeon. The pigeon has made more progress than you. **How it came about:** in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Christopher Lee's Saruman gazes into the palantír. In the late 2010s the internet renamed that "pondering my orb", and the picture became the reply for any long, pointless stare. **Why it caught on:** the phrase is grand and silly at once, and it describes most evenings exactly.