6.23.2008

I notice that the new issue of Wired magazine comes bagged with collectors' edition of the new Adrian Tomine novel, in sizes ranging from two inches to fourteen inches across, with cover price varying accordingly; a brilliant fundraiser. Later, we are seated directly to the side of the stage where we can see nothing. Waiting for the curtain to rise, I conceive a new instrument: half autoharp, half accordion. Its chord buttons mute some strings and also push air from bellows through metal reeds. The result is a bright sweeping plucking, or a sonorous wheezing, or both at the same time.
In an apology for the practice of self-delusion, I lead a tour of the dorms. At first the crowd seems sympathetic to my explanation that in even the most rational society, harmless misperceptions will accrue to large-scale fantasies. To restrict naive lying would be to curtail basic rights, I say. A man who looks like Alan Dershowitz is not convinced: establish a system of incentives that will guide us toward the truth, he says. All else would be mere chicanery.

6.21.2008

Mistakenly fertilized by a coworker, I quit and consider my options.

6.20.2008

After a border collie knocks a slow softball pitch out of the park, we are forced to look for a designated hitter. Cut to an aerial pan over a row of bodies at the morgue that settles on the bloodied face of former president Richard Cheney.

6.10.2008

The whole extended family tames and then swims with a benevolent swarm of amphibious dinosaurs as I look on from a vertiginous overpass.

6.04.2008

My elder cousin tells my grandfather that her newborn son will be a rabbi. As he takes in the news, his face grows flush with a kind of chubby eagerness, and I assume he will live forever.

6.02.2008

At the beach, which is more like a desert, we have left unattended on our blanket a pile of three manuscripts, the topmost of which is an unpublished essay by Garry Wills with a title something like, "VIOLENT CRIME: WHY WE CANNOT KNOW WHAT WE KNOW, BUT WE DO KNOW THAT WHAT WE KNOW IS EITHER HARD TO KNOW OR UNKNOWABLE." While we are busy chatting, a wiry Algerian nonchalantly walks over out blanket and takes the pile of manuscripts to his extended family a few feet away. When I walk over to confront him, he returns with one silent finger extended like a gun.