The fluorescent light overhead hums and has a flicker that I sense more than see. There’s a constellation of dead bugs in the fixture’s plastic covering. The Bug Dipper. I squint my eyes and try to decide which one is the North Moth, the moth by which I could find my way home.

As far as I'm concerned, there are two types of people in this world: people like Queeg who, when life gives them lemons make lemonade, and everyone else. And although those smug lemonade-makers think the rest of us just sit around all day day bitching about not getting oranges, they're wrong. It's all about volume. When you're ass-deep in lemons, you start looking for a shovel, not a pitcher and a cup of sugar

There is no such thing as magic," she told me. "You can b e l i e v e all you want, but it's never going to do you any good. Nobody flies. We only fall

One is a little larger than the other, but overall the Winstons look alike—tan fur, short legs, stubby bodies, batlike ears. They snort and trot around like little pigs, and already there has been significant fartage. I’m hoping it’s the sandwich and not the natural state of affairs, although it would explain the bowls of potpourri everywhere. JJ informed me, when he dropped them off, that they are French bulldogs, which has led me to reassess my opinion of the French.

A human wife or girlfriend isn’t nearly as interesting an adversary as Jesus.

Sometimes it’s not possible to tease out the beginning of the end, to find the origin of a break, to know whose finger knocked over the very first domino.