A giant shark-eating mosasaur kept in a lagoon like a gold fish in a bowl. A tyrannosaurus rex confined to a terrarium as if it were a mere iguana. Hundreds upon hundreds of pterodactyls crammed into an aviary like so many chickens at a factory farm. These are the deplorable conditions PETA found during an undercover investigation of the dinosaur exploiting theme park Jurassic World. And we cannot stress enough just how many pterodactyls were in that aviary.

During this time, all books were Harry Potter. There wasn’t a government edict or anything. It just happened over time. No one missed the dusting, although most people still owned real copies of the seven books. There’s just something about a real book.

I miss you, baby.

I miss the way you used to read me the morning obituaries in your best sexy voice. That always reminded me to be thankful I’m alive. I miss the way you used to coerce me to sit on the scale at the grocery store self-checkout to hear the machine voice tell me how much I’d cost if I were an artichoke. That always reminded me that my life had value.

I want to talk a little bit about my experience with the Greg Foreman Grill.

Now, many of you fact-checking hipsters are going to call me out and say that I spelled the first name wrong, but Greg Foreman is my cousin from West Virginia and he is the inventor of The Grill.

I’ve heard there’s another big name out there cock-blocking Greg from the prime lady-action that he’d inevitably get by being the inventor of The Grill, but let me say right here and now that it was Greg Foreman all the way.

I overheard some friends at my house one night saying: “Her tree looks more real than ours.” Why was this innocent remark, even compliment, so upsetting? Why did it keep me awake that night?