This all happened a few years back. I was running late for my job at the bird factory: instead of setting my alarm clock for 6 a.m., I'd accidentally set it on fire, had woken up not only two hours late but also in the charred remains of his former home. "Mondays," I groaned, and careened downstairs.

Just as I'd feared, my goldfish tank was empty — the water must have burned up — and my goldfish, Jesus II, was sitting atop his parched styrofoam castle, breathing heavily and crying. Acting fast, I filled the tank up not with water, but with Smirnoff Raspberry Vodka — the little guy looked like he could use it. I raced outside. Last time I'd been late to work my boss not only scolded me but fondled my genitals and made soft crooning noises in the bathroom for hours afterward, and I wanted to spare myself a repeat.

But I needn't have worried. When I arrived at work that day, the building was empty. Now that I considered it, all the streets had been empty, too, and there had been no traffic on the way to work at all. On my desk at work was a huge block of cheese with a note affixed to it: "You won."

At first I assumed that someone must be pulling my leg, like that time in high school my bully Rick (Santorum, R-PA) filled my gym shoes with urine and my backpack with urine and my urine with drug residue. But as the months passed, it seemed that I was truly alone. I took advantage of my newfound solitude to write the Great American Novel, Artemis Fowl: the Eternity Code, and also to masturbate in public.

One day a strange woman came to my door. She asked me politely to sit down and offered my a glass of something warm and salty.

"I don't know how to tell you this," she said, "but all of your friends and family are gone forever."

"That was probably the best way," I said. "Where did they all go?"

"Green Bay," she told me. "Eventually, your foul body odor and propensity to poke the townspeople with sharp objects got the better of them. They decided that, rather than try to reform you, they'd simply pack up and move to Wisconsin, where you'll never find them."

"And who are you?" I asked.

"I am the president of Wisconsin," she told me. "And I really must be getting back. Enjoy your glass of cow semen, Richard."

As she left, I thought about how fickle life is, how quickly a good situation can become a nightmare, how limited humans' ability to control their fate is, and also about cow semen.