He had spent the day drinking Manhattans.

He'd had the first at precisely 12:18 pm, quite early by puritanical American standards. Silly Americans, he thought drunkenly, we have actually convinced ourselves that alcohol is bad, yet we all eat pill after pill because we're so depressed.

He tried to think of someone under the age of 25 not on anti-depressants, but could think of no one.

He stumbled over to the calendar and changed it to February, wondering when anti-depressants would be put into the water supply like fluoride, wondering when, for our own good, we would all be rendered smiling and soulless.

"It's sick to be sad," he said to himself, then smiled soullessly.

He went into the spare bedroom for the tenth time that day and looked out the window at Roscoe, his neighbor's dog. Roscoe had been on punishment for the past three days, which meant his leash had been shortened so much that he couldn't lay down and his food and water had been taken away.

The dog slumped miserably, practically hanging from the wooden pole that held him in place.

"Poor Roscoe," he said, his eyes filling with tears, "What did you do this time?"