Simply trying to make my way to the drugstore to get my prescription for Balinex—

Seventeen months of carefully documented research and development have not, despite what out-of-context quotations in the trade journals may have led you to believe, let me emphasize again have not gone to waste but rather resulted in a most astonishing pharmaceutical which is even now being rushed to your local pharmacy. Features include a pleasant maple aftertaste and a contemporary shade of Pantone 2716 plus the distinctive new logo — designed by esteemed Danish collective Krabbe-Staalk — hand-embossed on each capsule.

—filled, simply trying to get around the White Van and this involves applying the Black Pill’s [acceleration] pedal all the way to the metal [of the floorboards], and I squeeze past, jerking the car to the left suddenly, knocking Assfuck’s license plate askew along the way, which prompts the headlight-flashing, so quick and regular it almost defies human capabilities, as if he’d somehow automated the process because of the frequency with which he finds it necessary to headlight-flash other assholes on the road and because of the soreness and “pins ‘n’ needles” sort of feeling he’s been experiencing in his wrists lately, and yet he still finds a way to bear the pain and undergo the difficult movements involved with extending his middle finger and waggling it at me repeatedly, the discomfort later described as “hot” and “jagged,” but still I make no response and so the finger must still be waggled and then he starts to realize that I am making a response by gently decelerating, slowing us both down, preventing us both from reaching our chosen destinations, but then there comes a point where I can no longer operate the machinery with subtlety and the brakes are slammed and sure enough I’m rear-ended and my license plate comes off completely and the trunk pops open thankfully blocking the flashing lights and I’m outside even before the White Van stops bobbing in shock.

“I don’t get this prescription filled this afternoon I enter what they call my berserker phase,” I explain, showing him the documentation.