"But I have to ask him," she protested. "I have no idea what it's like to be married. I mean, it's like talking to a dead person to find out what death's like. How else will I know if don't ask?"

I kept cheerfully answering her questions, even though I felt like I was on the receiving end of a seance. With enough charm anyone can get away with anything.

"But what about the sniffer dogs at the airports?" I asked. I've always been intimidated by the nasty-looking German Shepherds who greet me on about half my flights that pass through the Netherlands. (And, as an irrelevant aside, I must mention that on a flight from Amsterdam to Newcastle-upon-Tyne I was met with two ridiculous-looking drug-sniffing poodles.)

Tonya said she never worried about the drug dogs, because no dog can resist chocolate. When the customs police once asked her if she had "anything" in a bag one of their dogs has singled out, she wrinkled her brow for a moment then said "I can't think of anything except chocolate." The cops shrugged their shoulders and moved on.

I'm not convinced; I'm always skeptical of anything that sounds too simple, too complicated, or too dependable. Tonya's not, though; she insists the real danger is taking dog sniffing drugs, but that's another story for another day.

She thought he sounded like a jerk; I didn't understand her vitriol until I found the semantic source of our misunderstanding: she thought I'd said "he has a big muscle truck" when I'd actually said "he has a big mussel truck."

Of course that misunderstanding completely ignores the contentious debate about penis size(s), brings in a host of oyster myths and facts, and, specifically, ends this brief story before it balloons into a Ph.D. thesis of dubious merit.

Katherine and I are dear friends, although we never seem to be in synchronous orbits.

I mentioned this to a friend who said it wasn't of any concern to her: "My partner has no performance underwear." Did she mean her partner has no performance and/or wore no underwear? It was one of those questions best left unasked and unanswered.

The answer is dog oil. Or, more specifically, the sight of an otherwise attractive woman covered in dog oil. A lot of people don't believe in dog oil, but I do. Through some leak in the improbability barrier, I've recently met a number of very attractive women who were covered in dog oil from their canine companions.

Every time I tried to enumerate the perils of dog oil to these otherwise brilliant women, their eyes glazed over. I gave up trying to explain, and reconciled myself to the realization that my campaign against dog oil may be a lonely one.

I'd like to think it means that I'm not going to let an airline force me to stay in Detroit longer than absolutely necessary, that I value the company of my friends more than a few hundred dollars, and that I am generally above material concerns.

What I suspect, though, it that I've bought into the consumer culture I pretend to disdain. I fear that I have, in effect, just paid three hundred dollars to spend five hours sitting comfortably with rich people instead of uncomfortably with poor ones.

All I now know with any certainty is that the free drinks are a pleasant diversion, even if they actually cost over thirty dollars each. At least they're served in an entertaining fashion: the pilot urged the passengers to look out the window to see Chicago. Being gullible, I did, and when I looked back at my computer I discovered that the stealthy flight attendant had surreptitiously and serendipitously replaced my empty glass of whisky with a full one. What a beautiful trick! I'm looking forward to practicing that one my friends at the laboratory tonight.

Of course: rush hour variables are learned behaviors by pack animals. It's a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the only reason traffic speeds up and slows down on certain stretches of the freeway is because people know it will.

I tell other people about Jenna's observation, and they have the same reaction: disdain followed by incredulity that she's correct. Jenna should be gloating, but she's not. Instead, she's almost apologetic that she's proven so many people wrong. Embarrassed, she tries to shoot down her own theory. Listening to the music, she asks "Tangerines--is that about assholes?"

I'm not sure what to make of this theory; it's something I'll have to discuss with some feline friends.