Month: July 2025

On a small planet in the Oxygen Network Nebula, there was a man named Janet. Don’t ask, it was a Polish name that was spelled even less effectively in English.
Janet had two wives: Tate, who lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Tontina, of Hanover, whose motto was “surely you gesticulate!”
The wives were blissfully ignorant of each other’s existence. Tate was arguably the more modern of the wives, leaving Janet some wiggle room to arrange his comings and goings. Indeed, Janet maintained that since he was an adjunct professor at two different institutions of medium-to-higher learning, he had to travel and in some cases sleep over in different places. It was also highly convenient because Tontina, being more traditional, as she said, insisted that according to her astrological chart she was subject to occasional Wacky Wednesdays or Fucked-Up Fridays. On these days, she would scream, break plates, and annoy the neighborhood dogs. Janet believed her when she said she was going to rage, and tried to not be around on those days.
Is it easy to whittle an academic career out of the solid granite of New Hampshire? That depends! Although at first poor Janet might seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place, remember that this is New Hampshire, not Vermont. Some folks genuinely have such a hard time getting through snowy mountain roads that they de facto limit themselves to their local area. Thus, Janet could write peer-reviewed articles in one part of the state espousing radical Free Free Somewhere and then drive to his other institution and publish something else defending a completely different position.
Surprised? This can be explained by one humble theory: Libertarians don’t believe that fact checking should be an obstacle to life.
If you go snow-shoeing through the wilderness, all the while composing pleasant haiku in your head, and whistle while you work, perhaps you will be greeted by a nine-tailed fox. Or maybe, just maybe, your whistling will cause an avalanche. Many dream of a White Wedding, but not a White Funeral.
Who would miss me more, mused Janet? He could visualize Tate smoking a clove cigarette and sighing, yes, I loved him, for 7 years, and that surely has to be weighed against all the time I didn’t know him, not to say that I didn’t love him then, but I was incapable of loving him fully. And then she would ash out and, while coughing, think of the lingering love she, might feel for him two marriages on from now. Such is life and death.
Tontina, after having been told, might, instead of breaking things, put on her work gloves and, using Krazy Glue (trademarked item, never a disparagement) glue pieces of different objects together in a novel way. If life is going to go on, we must rebuild. So what if a piece of the Lighthouse of Alexandria ends up in the wall of a government building. We must reassemble. Did she even suspect that, in this way, she was even more like Janet? Janet, who, through the art of love wheedled pieces of different women, could make a new world, or at least a kind of map that resembled Settlers of Catan?
Long Live Janet! We all owned a fraction of him, just like the people of Green Bay are shareholders of the Packers NFL franchise.

The angels were busy doodling in the book of life. Not to say that they didn’t take the fate of fucked up, mortal humans seriously. Sometimes, they drew people with one eye, or with a naughty third leg, or with urine squirting out of breasts, or with a big tail that emphasized the diminutive size of something else, or with a forked penis that was facing north and south thus defeating its every intention. Angels did not understand the difference between prejudice and ignorance.
Then again, if humans planned on achieving anything, they had a funny way of showing it. Wake up, make the coffee, dawdle before drinking because they don’t want to get burned. What are you afraid of, hellfire? Just kidding! Of course you are! Dawdle some more. Maybe start writing a poem, maybe finish it next week or next year.
Diddling was about the only thing that humans did right. Diddling meant screwing, which, because it was not directed to high-stakes survival goals, proved that humans were not animals. Angels, who had neither penii nor penises, were impressed by all the diddling. They noted Oscar Wilde’s comment: The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”
If you must doddle, can you at least hurry it up? It’s so easy to fall in love, they would say. It’s so easy to fall into a pit. It’s so easy to ski downhill. It’s so easy to start the operation of compound interest. And it’s true that it’s easy to be a little pregnant which is the same as being fully pregnant. Doddling at its best.
Dandle me on your knee, that one used to say to me. And I would say, it was easier when you didn’t weigh 250 pounds. Then lie down and I will sprawl across your chest. I thought of what it would be like to take my last breath. Maybe, I ventured, we could do it with VR goggles? Then you could get dandled or diddled anywhere you want. She sighed. Do you remember when we used to close our eyes and just feel it? Try doing that in virtual reality. And so, that is why I am now writing my last will and testament. And the angels will get their claws on it very soon.