It's my partner's birthday this Friday. She is turning 25. I check my bank account: $61.06 until the 15th. I think I can stretch it into flowers and a dinner out, hopefully.

We are low on cash because we recently took a vacation we couldn't afford- not that it was lavish, but our time off was unpaid. Actually, vacation is a bit of a stretch for Arizona in June, but it was time off, back home. The first night we were there we shared a cigarette. It was well after dark, but the air was 90+ degrees F, and still- the smoke hung as if suspended. But it felt nice.

Across the street from us was an "undeveloped" lot, overgrown with plants indigenous to the Sonoran Desert: Mesquite, Creosote, Palo Verde, and plenty of Cacti. We heard a rustling in the brush, and I could make out the silhouette of a curved back on all fours.

"Is that a Coyote?" my partner asks. We've seen them before.

"Nah," I reply, "it's a Javelina. I can tell by its shape."

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Being a true and honest transcript of my keynote of the same name at the 1st International Noder Symposium on Malarkey Studies

Int. Exhibition Hall. Day.

MUSIC: "Love Me Like You Do," by Ellie Goulding.

Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Erm. Oh wait. That bit's later. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Christ, this public speaking thing is

"How to Dodge a Cannonball" is a 2025 novel by Jamaican-American writer Dennard Dayle, and is a black comedy set in the Civil War. It follows the wartime career of Anders, a teenage flag twirler that pretends to be black as he fights in an all-black regiment, and as he gets swept up not just in the war, but in a series of tangentially related conspiracies.

Several comparisons have been made to Catch-22, and Slaughterhouse Five is another obvious comparison. I myself was