MYTHOS:
The tax collector, having assumed that a dinner of broth and bread would permit it possible to bid adieu the nightly gnashing and thrashing about and to aggregate an uninterrupted cache of sleep, blew out the candle, turned on the sound machine, and did his level best not to be distracted by the steady pulse of his beating heart.
In the dream, he and others gathered around a glass atrium partitioned into three sections. On one side a scorpion was deposited and entrapped. On the other a long slinking centipede. The inner walls were lifted and it was expected that a duel would end in at least one death. Instead each combatant retreated to a corner and attempted time after time to clamber up the walls. The tax collector woke with a start, lying in sheets damp with sweat, and fumbled for his phone to see that one hour and thirty seven minutes had passed. It did not go much better from there.
PATHOS:
A would-be scholar of Hemingway, neither shower nor grower, had decided to place on Craig’s list an ad that read: “one pair toddler’s shoes, never worn,” and record what response came in. This was ostensibly for the purpose of adding an empirical touch to a desultory thesis that his committee of Americanists had swatted away repeatedly, as if his offering were rancid garbage from a mediocre Chinese restaurant. He received three responses - two asking if they were free and one asking if they were pink.
ETHOS:
If, as a grown ass adult, you reach for a platter of ham intending to spear a slice or two with the fork from your table setting, before you have eaten anything with it, of course, and are rapped on the knuckle with cutlery wielded by the guest sitting next to you, whom you do not know and whose affiliation with the bride or groom is unclear, is it (a) always permissible, (b) sometimes permissible, or (c) never permissible to, with malice aforethought but apparent inadvertence, spill freshly poured hot coffee onto the neighbor’s lap once the plates are cleared and before the first speech is given?
