Welcome to the exciting world of avoiding. You will avoid. You will avoid listening. You will avoid listening by destroying your speakers now. You will avoid dancing. You will avoid dancing by cutting off your arms and legs and not swaying to the rhythms. You will avoid the rest of the album. You will avoid the rest of the album by putting this first track on infinite repeat. You will avoid. Enjoy the music!

I've got to admit, I felt something new that day. Hope. It wasn't easy to get to hope. My family, they- Well, they decided to go another route. When I left home, it was a quiet departure. I told my mom that I was going to the city. She shuffled in place a bit and moaned, side effects from her procedure, but she didn't try to stop me. Dad was sleeping when I went. I don't know why I chose this city. At the time it seemed as different a place from my small town as I could get. I arrived by bus in a grey suit, the most recent birthday present from my parents and my only garment. The city was one huge sound. It was a looping sharp blast of noise that never peaked. It made me vomit convulsively just being in it. It took me several hours of weeping and dry heaving, bent over an alleyway trash bin, to realign my thought processes. I had to cope with the fact that every moment would always be backgrounded by this scope of frequencies. When I was able to think normally again, I decided to go about constructing a life for myself that would reduce the amount of possible interactions with the world to a bare minimum. I made a house in the alley out of a discarded box. I could sit the box up when I wanted to stand, or lay it down horizontally when I needed to sleep. It protected me from having to look outside. The greatest human invention ever was four walls and a ceiling. I tried living like that forever, but had to abandon the box after a few days when I began starving to death. The thought of having to leave this perfect home every few days to eat transformed into it less than stellar housing. I'd have to figure out another living situation. I poked a hole in one side of the box and looked out. I could see the alleyway's exit, the sidewalk, the street, the sidewalk across the street, and last I noticed a help wanted sign posted next to the door of a factory building. I crawled out of the box and across the street to read the sign. "HELP WANTED," it read, and below that, "Entry-level Aglet Biter position available, inquire within." "What's that you say," said a voice above me, but I hadn't spoken. I looked up and saw a smiling man sticking his head out the window. "What's an Aglet Biter, you ask?" I curled into the fetal position and squeed with high vibrato. Maybe he wouldn't notice me. I glanced up slowly and the man had disappeared back inside the building. I uncurled and relaxed. "Why it's only the greatest job in the history of assembly line work!" The man stood next to me. We were both inside a rapidly forming pool of my urine. He pet me until I stopped screaming, and then helped me to my feet. He went on about how he worked for the company's human resource department and was the guy to talk to about aglet-related work opportunities. "What's an aglet?" I finally managed to say. "Think of them as little pieces of rice, little pieces of hard rice we glue onto shoelace ends." I looked down at my shoes. Funny, I had never really contemplated those little, hard plastic pieces before. I could have stared at them for hours, but he started driving his points on job security and co-pay insurance home with finger pokes into my chest. Each poke was like a stab in the heart. I wanted it to stop. "I'll take it," I blurted out before I knew what I was saying. "Yippie goddamn dang-a-roo!" "But... is there food?" The HR guy's face contorted into something horrible. He put his arm around me. "What if I told you this is a job where 2.3% of the work is edible?" I imagined a giant loaf of bread. I was so hungry I couldn't imagine very well. I drooled excessively. "Yarm," I said, meaning to say 'yeah'. The HR guy directed me inside the aglet factory. He brought me to a room filled with conveyer belts coming out of the walls and had me stand next to one. He spoke words but all I heard was the low hum of my metabolic system shutting down. He pointed more. I instinctually winced at every point, but instead of my chest he poked at the conveyer belt and then tapped two buckets by my feet. My feet. My shoes. They looked so tasty. "You think you can handle that?" I looked up at him and gave a thumbs up. "Fuck yeah, my Mahnnn!" And the HR guy danced backwards toward the door. I was alone, staring at my shoes. A single ant walked across my left shoe. I was so delirious from hunger at that point I couldn't even be afraid. All I could do was watch. The ant crawled over to a squished rice thing on the floor and began eating it. "They're edible," I said and smiled. The ant was trying to save me from death. The conveyer belt roared to life. A voice on the loudspeaker crackled, "Welcome New Trainee #3232, begin process 003-20 and do not cease until we call out a scheduled lunch break." The belt brought more rice, each piece lined up a foot apart. I didn't care how they were bringing me my lunch. Bring it. I thanked the ant and laid down next to it, looking up at the end of the belt as the first piece fell. Opening my mouth wide I swallowed each one, slowly filling my belly up. Things were working out better than expected. It was then that I felt hope for the future. I thought, "I'm gonna like the city."

Wendall Shield, though it preferred that friends called it "Wend", was a great Afterlife Inc. caseworker. In its long and fulfilling nine minutes of existence, Wend almost helped one post-mortal adjust to afterliving. Wend wasn't born. A caseworker is simply manifested every time someone successfully scams another in the mortal realm. A sucker may be born every minute, but a caseworker is created every second. The moment Wend's life began, he received his first job. It was the donkey that was the first creature ever to punch its mate in the face when she looked back at him while they engaged in doggy-style anal sex. Upon seeing the diminutive little office worker the donkey became sexually aroused, which is a big no-no in the afterlife. The donkey attempted to penetrate Wend, causing a dimensional portal to open up and transport them both out onto Interstate 63 where a passing hawk snatched up Wend and fed it to her offspring and the donkey was flattened by a passing bleach truck. We remember Wend and mourn his death, just like we did the other 900 caseworkers that died today- Oh, it seems I've just turned 72 hours old. My natural lifespan just ended. Time to die. Ack!

JOSEPH: Hello? Where am I? Loudspeaker: Welcome to Limbo City! Please wait here until more suitable after-living arrangements are made ready. JOSEPH: Well, I've got my voice to keep me occupied, I guess... I'm sitting here Waiting for the time When my time is up I'll no longer be stuck Stuck! JOEY: Hey Joseph. JOSEPH: Hey Joey, nice bass. Wanna jam? JOEY: Sure! I'm sitting here Waiting for the time When my time is up I'll no longer be stuck Stuck! JOE: What's up, other mes? JOEY: Waiting around. JOSEPH: Killer keytar, Joe! Let's hear you grunge out. JOE: Okay! I'm sitting here Waiting for the time When my time is up I'll no longer be stuck Stuck! J: Sorry for crashing the bus, guys. JOE: No worries, J! JOEY: You suck, but we still love you. JOSEPH: Yeah, now count us out... J: 1, 2, 3, 4! I'm sitting here Waiting for the time When my time is up I'll no longer be stuck Stuck!

ANNOUNCER: Welcome back to Universe #5318008's 10th Era Deity Awards! This broadcast is brought to you in part by Multiverse Insurance, helping universes withstand those Big Crunches since the beginning of time. Now please welcome the minor archdemon and semi-retired, deli shop owner, Gerald Kurtz! GERALD: Life is a test tube and often times when deities create living beings, they try out new body parts that continually push the boundaries of what's possible in physics. When we think about living beings, we tend to think of hearts and brains and uvulas, but how often does one think of the spleen and all its wonderful uses? The Deities nominated for Best Use of a Spleen in a Carbon Based Lifeform are: Yahweh for the infraorder "Simiiformes". The Afterlife Administrator for the genus "Homo". And Steven Tyler for the specimen of Homo sapiens known as "Liv Tyler". The award goes to... The Afterlife Administrator! ADMINISTRATOR: Thank you! Thank you all so very much! Who would have thought, huh? Some 4 billion years ago, I was fiddling around with mitochondria and ended up making cellular life. Yes, it's been a while since I'd thought of anything really innovative, we all remember that dinosaur fiasco. The crazy fuckers tried to attack this universe's heart and end time a little early. Heh, heh, heh. Before I go I want to thank all those that made my creation possible. The Neadarthals, Great Apes, the whole simian infraorder, all the way back to the vertabrates and exoskeletons. Oh, I'm forgetting someone but I can't forget Homo Erectus... Thank you. Thank you for becoming sentient and thinking up all us supernatural beings so that we could, in turn, create you. Thus completing the paradoxical cycle of physical-metaphysical and starting the countdown to oblivion in thirteen billion years. Humanity, this one's for you. Thank you! Thank you and goodnight!

He crumpled up the note and took it, along with his ant farms, into the kitchen. Mortimer put the note in the blender. Then he added the cotents of all the ant farms. He added a little water and pressed liquefy. "Oh," he sobbed. He poured the concoction into a glass and choked it down. "Oh," he sobbed again. He pulled an extension cord from a drawer and tied it to his ceiling fan, balancing on a fold-out chair. He stood on the chair and carefully wrapped the cord around his neck. He looked out his living room window and saw a couple in the building across the street having sex. "Oh," he sobbed one last time, closing his eyes and stepping off the chair. -Excerpt from Chapter 3 of the book AVOIDING MORTIMER