There’s a common type of person, known to all people, who is regularly referred to in a pejorative sense. He or she is the lowest form of human and is looked down on even by people who are also this combination of human being and refuse, even though they may not recognize the terrible qualities in themselves.

So I met Ernest Hemingway. He was kind of drunk and obnoxious, and I didn’t want to engage, but he got belligerent when I mentioned “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates, and had he read it, and how good it was, and how it was better than anything Ernie wrote. That pissed him off so he tried to start a fight. He was so drunk he took a couple of swings at me that weren’t even close to my head, so I just backed off. It got boring after a while so I popped him in the schnozz, and he went down and passed out, not because of my punch, but because he was way too drunk.

“Come to my chambers,” said Xara, the 2,000-year-old temptress empress to intrepid explorer Maximilian Wolfsburg over the sounds of advancing troops. “I wish to know more of what you call pasta.”