The Past 24 Hours as a Brief Series of Vignettes

• A modern tragedy, though hardly of Grecian proportions: Gritty Baguette, or Did The Goddamn Filling On My Chipped Tooth Just Fall Out Again, performed recently as a monologue in Panera Bread.

• A man with a long, hooked stick, having just delicately placed letters on the marquee beneath the Senator Inn's bold road-side sign, packing up his materials and walking off, the words "INQUIE'R WITHIN" emblazoned in red for all to see (or be oblivious to). Me, dying of an aneurysm at a remarkably young age.

• An over-ripe banana with a pinched wound in its flesh, spewing countless fruit flies like blood cells, or tiny benign hornets wrested from their hive by some awful, instinctual compulsion.