When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?

It was headquartered in Michigan City, a long way off. I never saw Ku Klux Klan march.

There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.

Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

One thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.

Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.