I have been and remain an advocate of gifting taxidermied dogs. Primarily on first dates and anniversaries, although the practice can be expanded, with little effort, to secular holidays and extended family. Emotive poses can be readily achieved, provided the corpse has suffered little structural mutilation. And though larger breeds challenge display conventions, all dog types are preserved with lightweight fill material making them easy to move, carry and send via parcel post to points in the continuous forty-eight. To give a preserved dog, with marble eyes, stiff tail, vinyled tongue and all is to give peace of mind. Companionship, conversation, something to set in front of the magazine pile all come with a formerly living, now dehydrated, eternally frozen dog. There's even the...

House furniture resigning in disgust. Middle children bargaining their way into heaven. Roller skates reversing the aging process. A senator and a shoe, now and forever. Twenty-one ducks, blind and blonde. The curse of a master's degree. The tambourine wars never ended. A heartfelt hello in an ugly man's mouth. One thousand twenty imbecile sons. Each pointed east. Wet down the hairs, lock down the dreams. You've made wonderful choices. Let me help you into your fit.

Big jugs of syrup. That's what Jennyworth Anderson had dedicated her life to. The year was 1909. Three years before the world would be changed by the discovery of horses. And seven years before Jenny's world itself would be changed by a time-traveling bachelor scientist from beyond tomorrow. For now, though, it was syrup. Catching and carrying and moving and slopping around big buckets of maple run-off on her daddy's tree lot. It was hard work, rotating the jugs so that each got an even layer from every tree. And it was isolating work. It was well known even then that trees warm up to but one person at a time and won't bleed for no other. Jenny, having been born with no mother, had been forced to take over the sap collecting early on as her brothers had been devoured by...

Last night, tricksters bricked up all the entrances of the last drive-thru car wash in the state. Then they tied just enough helium balloons to the superintendent's house to lift it off the ground a few inches, creating a tripping hazard. These same tricksters went on to pry up random chunks of road cement and apply the right combination of exotic postage to pass the threshold of “deliverable.” Then they called up the all night sports talk radio stations and screamed, “Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!” on the air. And if that wasn't enough these tricksters devalued the currency and declared a trade war with neighboring Windsor, Ontario and left notes in random mailboxes written in the finest handwriting exclaiming, “You were adopted. It was all a lie. It...

Each night I press record on the VCR and tape six hours of the Home Shopping Channel. In the morning, I rewind the tape and set it up for the next night. I never watch the recording. Every night and every day, the cycle continues. If I fail, the great volcano will ruin our people.