One Second: This person is in love/lust with you or is feeling guilty for something minor they did that you may perceive as major, or is in some way extremely needy on a cellular level. Could also be auto-reply.

Ten Seconds: This person is a major friend, or perhaps work underling who admires you. It could also be a person who is in love/lust with you who was pausing slightly to encourage you to believe, for one moment, that they are not as much in love/lust with you as you might think they actually are. If work underling—they clearly envy your job and would like to have it.

Your social media needs to be scraped clean of any evidence of a wild life or a connection to the public eye; celebrities prefer significant others who the press will assume is a staff member at events because they look so ordinary. You can find celebrities at their jobs—in a dugout or an international screening of their new movie—but those aren’t where you should pursue a celebrity because, there, they are at work. Instead, catch them in their element: the most exclusive restaurant in the city or the bar where, since they were in the same fraternity as one of the bouncers, they let loose without fear of repercussions. If you research them, which isn’t hard to do because their entire lives are plastered online, you will be able to find them in a place where they don’t put their public mask on like a sheet of grass where they tiredly walk their dog every morning.

Thank you so much for agreeing to speak at our faculty workshop this Fall. Speaking on behalf of all my colleagues (well, almost all of them), we’re delighted to hear about your latest project and to read (or pretend to read) a draft. My assistant may—or may not—be in touch to help you make travel and lodging arrangements for your visit. If you have any difficulties there just let me know, although our staff is unionized and there’s nothing I can do to move things along without triggering the grievance process.

Over the last almost five decades, I’ve had to invest a great deal of time, effort and money into therapy: independent therapy, couple’s counseling, and even some new-fangled bullshit called “discernment” counseling. (We’re too nervous to try ketamine therapy.) It’s all due to the online trolling by ridiculously sensitive Gen Z kids who think I’m a heartless cheater looking for a raunchy, meaningless hook-up in the dunes on the cape. Well, I’m here to say that those kids don’t know WTF they’re talking about on TikTok.

Tonight’s top news story once again concerns Gamera, the giant flying turtle from those old Japanese movies. Although once humanity’s friend—saving civilization from the likes of Gaos, Mothra, and his frenemy Godzilla—Gamera now seems intent on destroying America.