I was today years old when I learned that my wife has, for the past 20 years, been monitoring the sound of my urine stream.

Something something prostate.

The thing is, it's not even good propaganda. Good propaganda — I mean the good stuff, the stuff that lasts — worms its way into the nooks and crannies of the mind, takes control in a sort of simultaneous mental possession and shutting-down of higher-functioning mental faculties and then punches one square in the plausibility dick.

Adolescence does not do this: Adolescence is just poor lying.