I was a doctor. One day I was visiting a friend’s lab to pick up some medicine when this guy wearing a deerstalker just abruptly walked up to me, magnifying glass tucked in his pocket. “Ah, so you’re the very fellow who’s looking for a roommate, eh? Obviously your name is Jack Duflack and you clearly fought in the Caribbean before turning into a professional sun tanner on the beach—am I wrong?” he said with a knowing wink.

The bearded man bent embarrassingly close to read the nametag pinned to the bosom of her dress. It went against her nature to tell her name to the world—how public, like a frog—but she had learned on the first day of the Connecticut Valley Writers Conference, when she didn’t wear it, that the nametag answered at least one unwanted question. When people asked “Who are you?” and she said “Nobody,” they took up a lot of time explaining that she really was somebody and shouldn’t be so lacking in confidence. A writer needs confidence above all, they said.

(^ヮ^) Hey YouTube! Guess what today is? It’s murumple day!

It’s a typical Wednesday morning at the office, and I am alternately revising a contract, sending calls from my mother to voicemail, Googling birthday party venues for my six year old, and scanning the latest Trump / border crisis / senseless gun violence related headlines. Looking down at my lap, my once crisply tailored slacks

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You are the men and women we, the comedic community, need, but do not deserve. Thank you for your endless charitable work and for helping us overcome poverty, depression, and thirst by covering our five dollar IPAs after our performances. With Mother Teresa’s patience, you endure awful open mics in rundown hellholes, where you have forced applause for a terrible sock puppet act, an annoying whiny guitar comic, and your slightly below average significant other’s pun about “holy socks.”