ANOTHER SEMI-FICTIONAL REPORT FROM MANHATTAN: AN IMAGINARY TRANSCRIPT OF DIALOGUES TAKING PLACE THERE

 ---"I'm hoping to get a discount on sympathy cards when I shop at Costco. If I buy them in bulk, it allows me to save money when I send my condolences to the grieving survivors."

---"I agree with you 100 percent. You never know what your personal finances will look like a half-year from now. It makes perfect sense to buy your sympathy cards in bulk."

--"The primary down side to this economy plan I've chosen is that not everyone likes the same type of sympathy card. If I send a sympathy card to a friend of mine who's 80 years old, she probably doesn't want to see the same color scheme and message on my card as the friend of mine in her 30s who I just sent a card do. The 80-year old might even get angry with me if she thought my sympathy card sounded 'too flippant', too 'breezy' for her tastes."

---"You almost run out of tears for everyone, there's only so many sympathy cards per day you can find the empathetic energy to actually write and mail out. I'm far more empathetic than most, but I prefer to direct my empathy toward those who are currently alive. But of course, the whole point of this is to comfort the survivors. Maybe I'm at a loss for words. I'm not completely sure how to comfort the ones who are actually alive. But comforting the ones who died is not an option. I don't have the magical power to communicate with the dead."

--"There's always the time-saver option of just signing a printed message that's already there, and making sure you at least put a nice commemorative stamp on the envelope of your sympathy card. The surviving relative will be pleased to see that I picked out a nice postage stamp for the front of the envelope. I try to pick commemorative stamps that highlight the theme of world peace or great physicians. The only problem with the great physicians theme is that there's proof, in the form of a dead body, that not even the finest physicians here could save their loved one's life."