A man was talking with me, saying wasn’t it funny, when the Space Age began, people started to see flying saucers, as if the very announcement of the era had summoned the aliens to usher us in.

I said, wouldn’t it have been great if that were true, and flipped on the television.

A voice on the TV talked about the destruction of The Great and Beautiful Things. Horton, who heard a Who, had been crushed to death under one hundred fifty firetrucks. (It had only taken one to do in Morris the Cat.) In retribution, so-and-so filled a house with Jeff Koons art and Velvet Elvis paintings, went out to sea, and brought back a chain of dolphins one hundred fifty miles long to destroy it.