The new looks for fall have arrived! This year, the economy being what it is, they’re actually the looks for summer, but with sweaters. Sweaters are very in right now! Try pairing one with the same office-casual shoes you’ve been wearing to work for the last three years, if you still have a job. Speaking of shoes, the ‘re-soled look’ is also very hot this season. There’s nothing like a glimpse of freshly-glued rubber peeping flirtatiously from the bottoms of your worn-out footwear to showcase your sense of style and practicality!

The Toaster

Breadphiles may finally rejoice in this new invention. For years, forced to hold their bread over fire, put it in the oven, or yell at it until it blushed brown with shame, breads fans the world over can now save time and money with what my sources call: “the Toaster.” Compact, lightweight, and able to fit on any countertop, one has to simply place the bread in the machine, depress the mechanical tray, and in minutes, fresh crispy warm toast is ready for whatever sugared spread is local to your town.

I have, for some years now, been accustomed to take a short walk in the evenings. During many of these I have had uncomfortable encounters with trees. Indeed, all encounters with trees are uncomfortable, if we are honest with ourselves. Such honesty is, however, rare and it is much more common that we choose to be oblivious to our own ineptitude in arboreal society. This merely compounds the problem.

Day 1, Saturday. My wife of thirty years has left me—who knows why. Sure, it annoyed her that I hadn’t changed out of my bathrobe or moved off her sofa since my retirement in 2005, but is that a good reason? Tonight I went to the bar where we first met and tried again. Actually that bar was gone, so I tried one down the street that looked similar, only someone had removed all the Pac-Man games and the jukebox and substituted a virtual darts thingum and a mechanical bull. I sat down next to a fox in her early twenties who was blonde like my wife was thirty years ago and asked her if I could buy her a drink.

Once, you dedicated your life to Love and Art. Lately, you’ve downsized it to Sex and Craft.

Think about the time those callous sophisticates at Wheat rejected the finest poems from your Stoned Surrealism period, including the immortal “Cabbage of Desire” and “10 Fingers of Hand.” When you’re done with that, dwell on the fact that being morose is not a salable skill.