Rick's List

Every time I turn on my Windows PC, at work or at home or in the self-contained kidney transplant facility I’m building in the backyard, the screen background materializes to life with a different, gorgeous landscape image.

These photos — any of which is superior and more jaw-dropping than anything ever published in National Geographic, The Robb Report, Travel and Leisure, or I’m Rich and You’re Really, Really Not magazines — are courtesy of something called “Windows Spotlight” and curated by Microsoft Bing. I don’t know who Bing is, but he’s certainly a fella who can flat-out take an exotic glossy photo for you. You might see: 1 An onyx, star-spattered sky over foaming night-surf in Sinemorets, Bulgaria 2 Fog-shrouded blue-gray mountain peaks lurking over a glistening green fir forest in Rica, Ukraine 3 A butterfly with wings like stained glass in a 12th-century cathedral, hovering over an expanse of Scottish barley flashing like spun honey under autumn sunlight

I know people who can’t wait for each new day — or at least each new computer reboot — just so they can scrunch their faces two inches from the screen and stare in wonder at the new Windows Spotlight image that will brighten their day.

A little research tells me that, inside the Windows think tank, this series of photos is privately and snidely referred to as “Places Our Rags-Clad Subscribers Will Never in Their Stinkin’ Lifetime be Able to Visit.”

And therein lies my problem. They’re right: I WON’T be able to ever see any of these places in person, and it makes me suspect the whole project has been partially funded by the companies that make Lexapro, Xanax, absinthe, or at least Cheetos. Ultimately, these pictures are depressing.

But I’ve come up with an idea that might make me rich and provide me with the funds to travel exotically after all. It’s a similar installation enabling users to bypass the gorgeous Windows Spotlight series — screw that Bing guy! — and instead presents a rotating supply of images that are emotionally crushing, ugly, foul or just bland, thereby making users feel better about themselves.

The series is called Rick-World

Destinations, and once engaged, you might see: 1 A gathering of glum people in a brightly lit conference room with a banner that reads INSURANCE ACTURIAL TABLE SEMIMAR 2 The vast team of morticians working in the fly-speckled heat in the direct aftermath of Jonestown 3

Detroit 4

A sodden line of defeated humanity extending out the door of the Department of Motor Vehicles in a steady, cold drizzle 5 A gorgeous Hawaiian volcano with lava gurgling in neon intensity — and a tourist falling into the crater 6 A clerk turning off the neon OPEN sign in the window of a late-evening Arby’s