When his self became a fear he couldn’t outrun, he woke his wife, and they drove through the night to comfort him. In those dark hours, they passed closed churches and open cookie shops. Normally he would have said something clever about that fact, but now it only frightened him.

His great joy had always been causing people to choke by saying something funny just as they were taking a sip of beverage. His wife guarded against this amusement, but one night he “got” her, and, indeed, she choked. Several days later, at her funeral, her brother waited, then. 

“Yin is passive, introverted—frequently weak. Yang is outgoing and opinionated. She’s happy to stay at home with a book and her cat. He likes to party.  Yin keeps their jaijitu (mighty circle) so cold that Yang, who is a real beach lover, constantly wears thick, heavy robes indoors.

“Prognostication poor.”

The Tao Te Ching, a much venerated book of Chinese wisdom, has endured for more than 2,500 years despite the fact nobody has really figured out what it means yet. The last person who spoke the Chinese dialect in which the Tao was written died in a single-cart accident during the Three Sovereigns Around the Moon dynasty (345-287 BCE). (more…)

The only birthday cards that Edward received were from three creditors and his parole officer. “Why let other people’s preoccupations with their lives spoil the party?” he thought. He sent himself an anonymous e-mail, agreed to meet the sender for dinner, and wasn’t shy about sex on the first date.

Billy hated mimes. He loved poking fun at (shadowing) them until one day a vindictive mime replaced Billy’s shadow with a copy of his. After several embarrassing daylight incidents and a near arrest on obscenity charges, Billy began going out only at night. Soon he stopped going out at all.