You’ve never done a thing for me.

Shall we call it a draw?

Recently, Jackson limped into court wearing one shoe, and couldn’t seem to remember much about anything. I suppose he employs people to do that sort of thing for him. At one point, the opposing attorney asked Jackson if he suffered from memory problems.

“Not that I can recall,” Jackson replied.

And so it is that the poor deformed man, with that remark, finally said something interesting.

“Isn’t it a shame about the scandalous state of nursing homes?” she asked.

“I suppose so,” I replied. “I really can’t say, since almost everyone I know had the good sense to die before they couldn’t take care of themselves.”

“Well, your family is lucky,” Roberta responded. “I’ve seen how shitty a bad nursing home can be, and I’m not going to let that happen to me.”

“Tobacco and alcohol work for most people,” I said. “Is that your strategy?”

“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “I’m investing in several different insurance policies that will ensure that I end up in an excellent nursing home.”

We talked some more, and learned that Roberta is thirty-eight years old. She’s planning for death, and not much else.

At 18:01 this evening, Rölf made the following entry in the central lab notebook:

All soiled dishes missing except for one bowl and four utensils. Small amount of soap bubbles floating in bowl; large volume of soap bubbles emerging from right drain. Scrub brush, two drain sieves, and nine thin, rectangular ice cubes in dry sink bottom.

I just smiled and shrugged.

I’ve always taken the approach of a British politician who said he tried to lead a life so full of public scandal and debauchery that no one could ever blackmail him. I haven’t been able to generate much scandal or debauchery, but I have learned not to hide my myriad lesser follies.

Greta doesn’t know me very well; she was appalled by my public display of immense stupidity.

“This is a day that will live in infancy,” she declared.

“If you say so,” I concurred.

Unfortunately, amaretto smells like cyanide, a correlation that no one involved in the million-and-a-half pound advertising campaign considered. Conservative British officials worried that some members of the public might panic at the prospect of a cyanide attack, and killed the campaign.

Pip pip and cheerio, that’s what I say. Even though I enjoy wine that tastes like grape-flavored lighter fluid, I, too, draw the line at cyanide.

Amaretto? Feh!

“If I felt even a milligram better,” I replied, “I’d probably vomit up big chunks of love and happiness all over the table.”

Anthony looked appalled; his reaction brought me no small amount of cheer. Sometimes it really does pay to lie.

Carol has a bottle of “Emulsion for the Corpse Body Lotion No. 5” in her bathroom. What’s that supposed to mean? Emulsion for the corpse that’s also a body lotion? A body lotion made from the emulsion of a corpse? An emulsion lotion for a corpse’s body?

And why does Carol have three locks on the door to her basement?