Having said that, Nasty grabbed the reporter by his lapel and growled the utterance that would make headlines: "I stopped beating my wife. Everything I say is a lie."

The electorate seemed to be so much ticker tape confetti that day, easily blown in a gust of opinion polls, piecharts in the face. The population was like dust in the wind, or smoke in the bottle, as Werd's speechwriter carefully spelled out: "now remember this 'we are one big alphabet' thing Johnny I think that one's gonna make USA Today."

"Well," Nasty snorted, "if we are one big alphabet, then some men are meant to be punctuation. And I'm the strikethrough key, Tinyman.

Mark my words."