H2O-melon + Canine in Emerald City

"I've been thinking about Fate a lot lately, perhaps because I just saw my Grandmother... probably for the last time. She's not sick or anything, she just bores the hell out of me.

But Fate, it's said, is like a fabric, woven with the threads of circumstance. Actually, it's more like a filthy rag, stained with the scum of coincidence. It hounds us all, the sons of man, like a Mormon missionary with an Amway franchise. Forgive the metaphor, but I love metaphors; they just come to me, like, like, ..., like something comes to something else, in a way...

Fate caught up with me, one day, in the city of Seattle; a lovely town, by the way, but oddly enough, it was raining the day I was there. I remember it well, the day, that it is. It was the 5th of July, an easy day for an American to remember, because it's the day after ten days before Bastille Day."

Thanks to the Internet Archive, a classic tale from one of my favorite humorists continues here.