"Nature abhors a vacuum," the Muse said. "You abhor flat surfaces without shit piled on them."

"It's not shit," I said, adding another envelope to the stack on the small table beside my chair. "It's clutter. There's a difference. "

"Clutter won't crush you to death if it falls over on top of you. You're going to end up in News of the Weird, I swear you are."

"My filing system may not quite be up to Third Reich standards, but I can find everything I'm looking for, thank you very much. I went to college, I know how to keep track of paperwork."

She put her arms above her head and stretched. "Well, you know what Hermann Goering said about education. 'Education is dangerous--every educated person is a future enemy.'"

I shook my head. "How do you know this stuff off the top of your head? You're a walking book of factoids."

She shrugged. "It's either know things like that or know who won the last American Idol. I personally think this is probably a little more interesting and important, and maybe the world wouldn't be quite so fucked up if more people thought that way."

"It's a mystery to me why people find you so insufferable."

She crinkled her nose. "I know. What's with them, anyway?"