A Wolf in Cheap Clothing

I’ve been in a bad mood for six months. Half a year of foul weather, foul moods, sleepless nights filled with venomous thoughts, and a low-grade, noncommittal flu virus have turned me into a snarling, visceral beast that bears little resemblance to the human I once was. I stumble around all day growling and glaring and thinking sanguine animal thoughts. I even have more hair than I used to.

Werewolf folklore says you have to be bitten by a werewolf to become a werewolf, but I think that to become a werewolf, you need only to spend the winter in Minnesota, watching television commercials and waiting for something to change.

Today I planned on writing more stories about a monkey with hampered depth perception and a diesel-powered fishing boat. I should write about him, too, because a funny incident happened recently wherein he heard the phrase, “Watch out for the reef, jackass!” for the first time in his life and mistook it for a warning to stay away from marijuana.

I can’t write about him, though. Drooling half-man, half-beasts don’t write stories about monkeys running aground on a reef near an island where women’s beach volleyball championship tournaments are being held. Instead, they pace back and forth, grumbling and hissing and raging against the pounding in their heads.