I’m really not.

You should be.

In Fort Worth a couple of days ago, thirty-four office workers ended up in the hospital after inhaling noxious fumes. Over a hundred other people were treated by medical emergency personnel at the scene of the poisoning.

Here’s what caused the borderline asphyxiation: perfume.

This sounds improbable, but then the entire state of Texas is entirely improbable bordering on the impossible. For example, many Texan woman sport truly big hair, bouffants that defy common sense, gravity, and good taste. Hoo boy!

It follows that women with big hair would use big perfume. I’ve been to Texas, and have seen five-liter jugs of perfume sold for under ten dollars, so I’m familiar with the toxic threat that felled the unfortunate office workers.

I don’t like to repeat stories with morals, but this one is obvious. Texas is toxic; avoid it like the stinky plague it is.

And so, how do robot armies travel? The people who manufacture the mechanical warriors claim they’ll run on, “biomass.” And what’s the most abundant source of biomass on a battlefield? That’s right; dead soldiers are fresh meat, er, biomass.

“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population,” explained Harry Schoell of Cyclone Power Technologies, “but that is not our mission.”

Of course eating dead soldiers isn’t Schoell’s robot warriors’ raison d’être; they exist to kill and destroy. But when the battle’s over, and it’s time for a meal, and there are all those bodies rotting in the sun, where’s a hungry biomechanical fighter going to go for a little victory snack?

Soldiers have always been fresh meat, and always will be.

On the way back to my studio, I noticed something unusual in the grass: American currency. Specifically, I found a fifty-dollar note.

This welcome discovery led me to conclude that recycling is not its own reward; finding fifty dollars is its own fifty-dollar reward. I spent my small windfall on a couple of cases of wine, resulting in twenty-four more glass bottles to be recycled.

Easy come, easy go, easy come again!

“Looks like we won’t have to be concerned about being thirsty tonight,” I said.

“Underdoses are preventable,” Anastasia replied with a smile. “No worries, mate!”

I love Australians; who doesn’t?

The ocean a few kilometers away from me is too cold for a sensible, nude person to enter, so until someone sends me to Hawaii or Thailand again, I shall have to make do with immersing my hand in my aquarium.

When he was on the verge of puberty, he pulled the nasty prank of hiding bits of rotting fish in all four tubas in the school bandroom. As a result, the band director, Wally Karboski, banished him from the music program. On his report card, Karboski wrote, “Gabriel has demonstrated that he is unfit company for man or beast.”

“I read what the old man wrote, thought about it, and figured out that if I shouldn’t be with men or beasts, that left women,” Gabriel explained. “So I went for women, naturally.”

“Naturally,” I agreed.

That sounds like the beginning of a joke, and it may be. It’s also the premise for a Turkish television program. The producers are inviting “certified” atheists to appear on a television program where representatives of various faiths will attempt to convert an unbeliever to become a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Buddhist. The “winner” will receive a free trip to the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, or Tibet.

Television is the embodiment of stupidity, but I must admit I’m intrigued by the oxymoron of a Buddhist evangelist. I wish the producers good luck; their program could be just the thing to introduce some much-needed religious discord to that part of the world.