I can no longer bear this sudden absurdity I’ve found myself in. You first approached me in class after one of my short stories had been workshopped. You told me you liked it. Now I can hear you in the bathroom exfoliating your face or darkening my towels, whatever it may be. That doesn’t even make sense. I wrote an imaginary story on paper, a silly and blatant lie, and now I have to engage in dirty, dirty coitus with you. What happened between those two points? What is this syllogism?

Author Philip Roth, quoted in a New York Times article about his recently announced retirement: “Every morning I study a chapter in iPhone for Dummies, and now I’m proficient. I haven’t read a word for two months. I pull this thing out and play with it.”

Day One: Wow, is this thing amazing! It fits so perfectly in my hand, I just can’t stop touching it. Warm to the touch, responds to my every whim. The manual says I can even make it vibrate?!

In 1847, the unrepentant 29th American Congress voted to repeal a piece of legislation, enacted in 1812, that forbade “public procreation and all acts of a carnal nature” from “finding roost within the civic eye.” This repeal caused an outcry at the time, particularly in the then-fledgling Western states. One Oklahoma columnist expressed her outrage in a church circular: “Damnation shall rain like fire upon the heads of our deeply misguided congressmen.” This prophetic conjecture was wrong in its particulars, but correct in its general thrust. Four days after that circular went to press, Democratic Speaker of the House, John Wesley Davis of Indiana, was vaulted into a fiery fissure that split open the floor of the Capitol building.

Just in time for [insert holiday here], it’s the Lil’ Richy Einstein Play-a-Majig! This ultimate 70-in-1 learning toy makes being a kid so fun, you’ll never have to buy another toy again.

The assignment was a simple one: consolidate the email subscriber lists into a single spreadsheet. Or at least it seemed simple. Three tabs of blotter acid and a fifth of Jack later, and it became clear that the swarming birds would never allow it. They were all over the keyboard, shitting and clack-clack-clacking away on the IBM Selectric typewriter I’d brought from home. Liz said to use Excel, but a laptop is the establishment’s computer—the machine’s machine. You gotta feel the ink on your fingers, suck down the fumes if you wanna stay free and connected to your craft.