It’s pretty terrible knowing there’s a creature in our woods, knocking over ancient trees, snatching away our fellow villagers in the night, etc. etc. No one’s denying that. It’s awful.

I’m just saying… there’s credible reports the thing has a saddle on it. THAT’S the part I’m saying is hilarious. Someone got a saddle on that dark beast! What skill! What hubris! What a monument to dreams!

I hope they managed to ride it, at least once, before the end.

Happy New Year! According to our interpretation of the order in which the bog reclaimed the runes we scratched in the mud, it is now officially the following:

The Year of the Slowly Sinking
The Year of the Many Legged
The Year of the Miasma and the Closing Throat

If any of these are your sign: You have a prosperous year ahead for as long as you don’t think about it too much!

For everyone else: Better luck next year! We’ll see you back here among the tangled roots of the few trees that refuse to die here!

Okay, wallets out, capitalist scum, ’cause we’re disrupting the dirt market.

How? Easy: There’s an app. Duh.

You want dirt: Use the dirt app. Dirt comes to you. Fills your home. So much dirt. You unlock loyalty rewards like a marble stone with your name on it, says you’re in the dirt right there.

We got the dirt network in place. My pal Dave knows coding. You give us the funding and we’ll have everyone six feet under and the profits won’t stop ever, not ever. Money forever, dirt forever.

Walking to the train this morning, I passed a small clay shrine on a street corner. It consisted of a bowl and a tiny clay man who had lost an arm. The body was crude, just tube-shaped limbs like snakes, but the face was detailed.

Between its legs, bird seed.

I almost took a picture of this little god of bird hearths, but was too self-conscious, due to a group of construction workers standing nearby. (I prefer to take photos unobserved. Dunno why.)

So instead I’m telling you.

You brought a knife to a knife fight.

Well done.

I’m so glad you read the invite carefully. Thanks as well for the RSVP and for arriving promptly at the listed start time. Thus far, this has been our best organized knife fight yet.

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Everyone got their ambulance buddy picked out? Yes?

A dentist who has to get pre-fight worked up before removing plaque. Stomping around, slapping tables, taking deep breaths.

“WHOOOO! Okay, plaque, today I am going to MURDER you, bro! I’m gonna leave your body in the WOODS, bro! You … you messed with the WRONG TEETH, bro!”

Oh joy of days, it’s Monday, and we all know what that means! The weekend is over, so it’s time to get serious: Time to strip every vegetable in the pantry of its given name and history and tell each vegetable separately that it has no future and no dreams. It’s the only way they’ll be quiet all week, and meek under the knife.

A magical race of scroll people. They remember being trees. They’re animated by the words that run through them. When they talk, the riffling of pages, their face an open book. They’re great scholars and their love is literary and strange, fingers paging through each others bodies, poring over the lore within.

They burn libraries as abominations of non-living words.