If, while watching the sun set on a used-car lot in Los Angeles, you are struck by the parallels between this image and the inevitable fate of humanity, do not, under any circumstances, write it down.

Cheese that is required by law to append the word food to its title does not go well with red wine or fruit.

Calling a taxi in Texas is like calling a rabbi in Iraq.

Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

You sit or stand in the subway, and you look around - I do, because I don't have a phone so I'm not playing a game - and you see people.

Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut??

It is, in fact, safe to assume that, more often than not, life imitates craft, for who among us can say that our experience does not more closely resemble a macramé plant holder than it does a painting by Seurat. When it comes to art, life is the biggest copycat in the matter of the frame.