When I moved to Seattle from a small town two hours south, I loved looking out my window and seeing evidence of other people: blinking marquee lights, flickering TV screens, the line of cars crawling up and down Queen Anne Hill. The people whom, barring a catastrophe, I would never have to know. I inherited this worldview—that the best neighbors were strangers who stayed that way—from my mom.

“I don’t know why they didn’t hire me. I was perfect for the Italian lady role. I told them I was Italian and they have no way to verify that information, especially if my mom is Italian and she took my father’s name which would explain why my last name isn’t Italian!” stated up-and-coming actress Mia in fury while getting her forehead Botox injections.

Former Sir Leicester is in town. His entry from the UK was uncharacteristically low-key compared to his spectacular entrances at ribbon-cutting ceremonies and trade shows. He did not arrive in a hot air balloon or on an elephant’s back, as we have seen him do before. He simply landed at the airport on a jet plane like any other mortal being. He flew the plane himself, though, being a certified pilot.

First of all, ditch the checkbook. It’s on-line bill-paying with a credit card from our office from now on. That signature of yours is worth something now, so we can’t have it floating around. Plus, if some ass-wipe from nowhere can rip off your payment to your telephone company to pay their own bill, just imagine what a determined Chinese hacker can do.

As a history buff, I spent my recent vacation on a week-long road trip to sniff out real American history, and failed miserably. I wasted hundreds of dollars and put countless furlongs on the car to arrive at the completely faked Abe Lincoln Birth Cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky, for example. This monument to a great president contains not a twig from the original cabin, but the shed-like structure stands close to my home in the Midwest, so that’s where my ill-fated journey began.