That’s the point.

And today, there’s nothing on the radio except hours and hours and hours and hours of purportedly patriotic—mostly saccharine—tributes to the American dead, with nary a mention of everyone else who’s died.

And, with the American elections coming up soon, the national village idiot installed as president by five supreme court justices is beating the drum for a fresh war. Can a rise in the stock market and cheaper oil be far behind?

It’s a depressing day in a depressing country.

“About” is the operative word in the preceding sentence; I’ve run into a technical obstacle. For the last few years, I’ve planned to separate each of the prints in the portfolio with a sheet of transparent vellum, with a ghost image printed on the interleaf superimposed over the “real” photograph. Unfortunately, I can’t get the two images to align properly. My computer says the two images are in perfect registration, but my digital printer disagrees. Once again, practice trumps theory.

I finally decided to solve the problem by printing small images on the vellum. I made each of them only six centimeters in height, about the same size as the original Hasselblad negative. With the vellum image so much smaller than the one below it, no one can tell that the images are a millimeter or two out of perfect alignment.

I was surprised to find that I liked this approach much better than the one I’d planned on using for years. Nevertheless, I find this happy accident disturbing. I wonder how many of my other ideas in progress would benefit from a similarly thorough reëvaluation?

The answer is this: Even I know enough to never answer rhetorical questions.

For the record, I have no intention of impregnating anyone anywhere ever. I apologize for the misunderstanding. I’m sorry; I really had no idea. It won’t happen again.

I don’t know much about bowling balls, so I can’t say whether or not the “Hammer” brand is rare or common. I do know, however, that I think Hammer is a great name for a destructive tool. I look forward to dropping in on things from a great height.

“I don’t know who Seymour is,” I admitted. “I don’t follow fashion at all.”

“It’s not a designer’s name,” Nan explained; “It’s a generic phrase my mother invented. It’s spelled s-e-e-m-o-r-e.”

“Aha!” I said. “That would explain the tiny, tight dress.”

“That’s what my mother thought,” Nan agreed.

Last night I only saw one toothbrush in Jill’s bathroom. That struck me as very sad.

The man unwrapped the parcel and pulled out three massive pieces of oily naan bread. Their staple smelled like a delicacy, especially since all I had was a tiny bag of salty peanuts. I had a pleasant flashback to the meals on the Rajdhani Express. I wonder why airlines can never serve meals as wonderful as the ones on Indian railways?