What a day. Converted six gallons of stinking Atlantic ocean into pure, clean water. My prototype desalinization plant is an unqualified success, though still limited in how much it can process. And I can’t let it run unmonitored, no way. Last week, the thing was humming away in the basement and I thought I could safely jog upstairs for a couple of drinks, spread some peanut butter on something and eat it, and I get one foot in the kitchen when I hear this sound, the ghosts of a million slain babies howling in fear and anger. I hustle back downstairs and the brass tubing has uncoiled and snapped, the decanters shattered, water spraying out in fine, deadly jets. It left twin welts on my chest — an infinity symbol and a kind of wobby sigma.

[TEN YEARS LATER: a similar situation, except this time the water pipes knocked open with a fire extinguisher. Immortalized in Eller Max’s Untitled No. 103 (water pipes v. fire extinguisher).]

So somebody’s got to man the release valves but it’s not like I won’t be able to afford a maintenance crew once everything’s up and running. I’m talking about desalinization, bitch, OK? You got a way to take all that useless saltwater out there and make it into something that can fill a kiddie pool in Reseda and the canals at the Bellagio and run cool and clear through the tap at the Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau and that’s it, friend, you’re set. You’re a god-emperor. Luck on every finger, as they say. I’ll be buying solid-gold automatons to deal with the valves, their gears clicking in the musk-scented atrium of my glass palace, always on the verge of being overtaken by a vast jungle, fecund and overcomplicated.