1. “I Didn’t Reject You; You Weren’t Even Eligible To Apply In The First Place,” Says Lesbian To Straight Man

You, specifically, are being watched by a crow. Not “people in general.” Not “someone out there.” You. This is not a metaphor. This is not a spiritual fable. This is not a goth phase. This is science. We have charts. We have caw-based data. We have a control group that accidentally summoned a parliament of ravens instead (they’re fine now, mostly).

Over a 24-month observational study funded by a grant we may have misunderstood (thank you, Department of Unusual Phenomena and Municipal Pigeon Control), our team conclusively determined that a crow has selected you—yes, you reading this—to be its permanent subject of anthropological curiosity, judgment, and occasional sabotage.

Existential fear has descended upon the venerable stacks of the Silicon Valley College library. Darkness at Noon is among the first to feel it, and not just because of the rat-tat-tatting of jackhammers. Something ominous is also taking place inside: library personnel are yanking cartloads of books off the shelves, denuding them of their spines and covers, feeding them page-by-page into scanners, reassembling them, and as a final outrage packing them into metal bins.

The Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, was followed by a brief, embarrassing phase in which one species somehow became dominant: homo sapiens, or “humans.” Humans were mammals who lived on land and watched YouTube.

We first learned about humans when Dr. Martin Hardshell, a forensic crustalogist, was digging in Ancient Philadelphia with his own two claws. Our understanding of world history was fundamentally altered by his discovery of the Fishtown Ukulele and the Manayunk Toupee.

Before you humans started bragging about bendy thumbs, we ants had a very sophisticated  culture. Our art was stepped on by every known species and carried on their soles to the far corners of the Earth. But millions of years of ant art produced only one true towering marvel of literary excellence: Woodle.