I woke up with a gnome in my apartment.

He was frittering around in my kitchen, jangling pots and pans and pissing off my pet bird. I usually consider it wise to leave a gnome alone, but this little bastard was making so much noise that I picked up my heavy desk lamp and...O, let’s come off it! Does anyone feel like weeping? What do we care if the gnome had both his legs broken by my lamp or if he barely managed to crawl through the slats of the heating vent? We have to use hard facts and experience results. Some cicadas spend seventeen years gestating in the dirt. One day the maddening dark forces them to emerge. Try and refute that. Because of biological processes and weather conditions, cicadas come out and die after a few weeks of singing and mating. Right now, using phrases like "breath of life" really gets us off track. Five hundred people control half the world’s wealth. Cyanide smells like almonds. I am a survivor. I had to cover myself in filth, but I’ve avoided detection.