People are always coming up to me and saying: “Josh? Josh Allen? Of the Farthingham Allens? Who manufactured date-rape drugs in his basement laboratory in high school and totally skirted jail time by blackmailing the judge with MacPaint-doctored Splash Mountain titty photos?” And I do a mocking bow and say, “Speaking,” and they say: “Where do you get those delightful subject lines for your emails?” And I explain that many roads lead to this shining destination—

• Phrases that I shriek in my sleep, dutifully recorded by my shriek-activated tape recorder,
• excerpts from the novel that I’m allegedly writing — in fact, if you stitch together the subject lines of every email I’ve sent over the past 30 years, you’d have the whole thing plus an audio commentary,
• other people’s subject lines that still seem to work out of context,
• parrot-squawk’d phrases,
• half-remembered “safe words,”
• maxims from my Kitties Hanging From Things And Thinking Funny Things In Thought Balloons 2001 desk calendar,
• and ugly comments I’m afraid to make in the actual email itself.

P.S. It was [insert emotion here later] seeing this photo on a website yesterday because it’s just a few blocks from where I grew up and I remember, as cute li’l tyke in lederhosen, being concerned for the safety of the horsie perched on top of the roof. Fascinatingly enough — jaw-droppingly fascinatingly — I never actually went into that diner until earlier this year when my little brother took me to breakfast there. It was all right.