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My buddy here met her first skunk the other night.

It was also an education for me as I can now tell you that, when a skunk lets one rip, it does not smell like good weed skunk-at-long-distance skunk. It's like hell on earth, distilled essence of late stage capitalism: Burning tires, oil refineries, chemical spills, tear gas. Shockingly unnatural.

Invisible cloud banks of it filled the yard and, as soon as we opened the door to answer Bonnie's panicked pounding on it, the entire house.