My socks are dying, my underwear fading to extinction. Dust is all around me. There are mice dancing in my kitchen, yea, deep into the night they frolic and lick things and move furniture and run up huge phone sex bills, honest, it's not me, it's the mice. They have reprogrammed my VCR, too.

There is a foreign dog here, with frictionless buttocks. It whimpers unless I pet it. It slides backwards whenever it sits down. It has also reprogrammed my VCR. I have learned nothing; I am awash in refuse.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but it's not the heat, it's the humidity. I will become a moist wad. Nothing will harm me then, not the heat, not the humidity - the humidity, having done its work, will seek to collect unemployment. It will strategically reduce its waiting time in line by pretending that it stinks.

Then, when the check comes, it will be soggy, of course, and written with a knife instead of a pen; when unfolded, it will be a beautiful snowflake. As shall we all. But we are a crumpled race, not a folded one. The time for the uncreasing of our sins is long past. We shall pay, and pay again, but we shall not tip, for we have been waiting hundreds of thousands of years for our beverages, and many generations have passed since we were seated.

And never, ever let them see you sweat.