Ack! Parables. I hate parables.

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

In fact, he sorely hoped that it would happen, because otherwise, the world made no sense, there was no justice, and life was just a tangled ball of chaos.

Winter near the shore is cold. The wind kicks up a salty mist and elephant seals come to shore to trumpet and rut and birth their pups. Retired people put sweaters on their lap dogs and drag them down the street on retractable leashes in a nightly parade of doggy humiliation. Surfers don their wetsuits against the chill of storm waves and white sharks adjust their diets to include shrink-wrapped dude-snacks on fiberglass crackers.

An original thought would crack your feeble skull like a thunderbolt, you craven vulture.

Love: the sickest of Irony’s sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die.

Sometimes this high-tech world calls for low-tech solutions.