Ack! Parables. I hate parables.

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch.

She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species.

The netherworld is timeless and unchanging, and boring -- much like a doctor's waiting room.

Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair.

Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter.

Just because he was pretty didn't mean he couldn't be improved by a smack upside the head with a piece of earnest hickory