Melancholy sits in a waiting room, paging through a news magazine. His new psychologist enters, walks over, and hands him a blue plastic frog. "Take this," he whispers. "It's important." They walk back to his office. "It's very nice to meet you," the psychologist begins. "I am Dr. Willis."

Melancholy glances at the nameplate on his desk. It reads: "She sells sea shells." He ignores this and replies, "It's nice to meet you as well." He isn't sure what to do with the plastic frog, so he sits it atop his left knee. Dr. Willis does a poor job of suppressing a giggle.

It's quiet for a bit, so Melancholy clears his throat and says, "If it's all right, may I ask about your theoretical background?"

"You certainly may. My original training was in cognitive-behavioral but I have recently switched to a more challenging and interesting school of thought. It's called Vicariously Nonconstructive Re-modernism."

"Wow," says Melancholy. "I've never heard of that."

"Oh, it's new. It's totally new."

"So that makes you... what? A Vicariously Nonconstructive Re-modernist?"

"Precisely! I am tossing out all of that reductionist behavioral crap and going a totally new direction."

"I guess I'll need a bit of an overview," Melancholy says. "Like, structure-wise, how are these sessions supposed to go?"

"Here is the game plan: Today is a day of introduction. It will include, essentially, small talk, finger puppets, and that blue plastic frog you have sitting on your knee." Dr. Willis pauses here to giggle. He continues: "At the next session, should you choose to continue, I will throw my shoes at you and recite dozens of filthy, pornographic limericks. We drop acid together on the third session and get tattoos. Fourth session? Poisonous snake handling. Then we'll switch roles for a session. You'll be the psychologist, and I'll start weeping and moaning, and you'll have one hour to cure my terribly awkward squirrel fetish. And... that's it. Then you'll be all better."

Melancholy sighs. "Maybe instead of therapy I should just stay home and drink a lot."

"Fuck yes," says Dr. Willis quickly. "Booze is so important. Sweet mercy I love booze."

Melancholy picks up the plastic frog and looks at it. Dr. Willis begins to whisper. "The frog is negation. See my little finger-puppet kitty? She is armor fat, love of fate. Mr. Silly Billikins here, on my pinky finger, he represents you, and he's all about the flight from self. He's a pig, you see, a capitalist. He's been culturally removed from his own stuff-producing nature. His motto is, 'Stuff, stuff, there's never enough.'"

Melancholy lets him go on for a bit. Eventually he interrupts and says, "This puppet thing is kind of boring. I thought we were gonna use, like, ink blot tests or something."

Dr. Willis looks disappointed but says, "Meh, fuck it. Why not?" He digs around in his desk and holds up an ink blot image. "What do you see?"

"Um... a butterfly."

"Wrong. It's a blob of ink that has been randomly smeared by the folding of a piece of paper." Dr. Willis holds up another one.

Melancholy says, "It's a bat."

"Wrong again," replies the doctor. "This too is just a random smearing of ink. You're not very good at this."

"I thought the whole point was for me to offer up clinically relevant data in response to ambiguous visual stimuli. That ink blots, because they are random, elicit the projection of unconscious drives and processes."

"Even if that's the case," the doctor says, "your responses still aren't very useful. A butterfly? A bat? Where does that get us? Now, if you had said, 'I see mommy eating a banana,' that would have been helpful."

Melancholy leaves. On the way home, he wonders what a lobotomy might feel like.