Jo-Jo walked down the street with his hands on his hips and his mind on Nietzsche’s theories when he came across the last known live world war one soldier. He said to the soldier, “Tinker-Mailer-Soldier-Wailer-Skype!” Shortly afterwards the soldier said, backwards mind you, I will reverse for your ease of reading: “The lord died so that man may live, but when I go you’re on your own.”

Jo-Jo walked down the street with his pockets in his hands and some socialist ideas regarding the garment district when he started to think about his wife. Sam was his wife and she came via mail order Fed Ex for humorous purposes when Jo-Jo was sick from work one day [that’s a lie, Jo-Jo hasn’t worked in years]. Sam loved Jo-Jo (I’m going to call him JJ from now on, okay?) and she desperately wanted him to have his tubes untied so that she could start a family. You know women, etcetera etcetera and so on.

One day and night, after making passionate love to JJ in her mind, Sam was going to say to him, “Could you make the butter less runny next time you bring me breakfast in bed?” But instead it came out of her mouth as, “I’ve never loved you and you’ll only start to love me when the rejection sets in.”

JJ knew that, had he been awake when Sam said this to him, he would have had a chance to think it was a dream – but because he could drift in and out of sleep due to chronic insomnia and erectile dysfunction, JJ responded on an Etch a Sketch he kept for such situations:

“The written word fails to express the pain I feel in my head, heart and left testicle! I therefore will commit my life to detective novels and expelling the last known fantasy people have regarding jukebox collecting. Besides, I never did love you more than you loved me and now that it’s over, you can only communicate to me by semaphore.”

Sam was crying as she back-packed her clothes and needlepoint work into a mailbag JJ stole when she realized how right, by GOD how right!, her mother was when on her death bed- she told her that Great Expectations was the novel that killed Dickens in critical reviews and WHY DIDN’T HE SEE THAT THE HELL COMING?!?!

After the atoms had split and the vertigo subsided, equilibrium became a hard commodity to buy back on the open market of daily living. Being funny hasn’t helped, thought JJ, nor being nice neither. Only my cat likes to spend time with me, but I’m not too fond of him.

What to do, said JJ into a fishbowl he was feeding, as he thought about strobe lighting and motion sickness and time travel.