When Neil Gaiman cares to, he can write an excellent short story. I note that "Rache" also calls himself "Sigerson", which of course is from The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, by Mr. Daniel Pinkwater, and references the greatest detective in the world (and an accomplished avocado amateur), Osgood Sigerson. The Snarkout Boys also contains a passage some of us (and I include myself in this number) might do well to heed:

Everybody ate in silence until the Bullfrog Root Beer was served. Then the conversation at the table got started. Aunt Terwilliger began making a sort of speech about grand opera. She was against it. Later, Rat told us that her aunt had just about every opera recording ever made. Her aunt spent hours in her bedroom listening to them, but all the rest of her time was spent arguing that people shouldn't listen to operas, and, above all, they shouldn't go to see them performed. Rat said that Aunt Terwilliger makes regular appearances in Blueberry Park, where she tries to convince people to live their lives opera-free. She feels that operas take up too much time. Also, she has an idea that people who like opera will become unrealistic, and not take their everyday lives seriously. Most of all, she believes that operas are habit-forming, and once a person starts listening to them, it's hard to stop, and one tends to listen to more and more operas until one's life is ruined.

Aunt Terwilliger has pamphlets printed up that she hands out. Her most popular one is called "Grand Opera: an Invention of the Devil."

I can't be the only one who went through age fourteen with an enormous crush on Rat, can I?