If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness.

a soil that is highly retentive of rainwater

But Joseph’s mobile phone seemed permanently off, and we soon learned that he had been caught by the police with a trunkload of whiskey.

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.