I had to sit on the floor; there wasn't enough room on the couch. A cartoon was on: an enormous bipedal moose, his tubelike legs extended before him, sat on a couch barely wide enough and long enough to support his massive buttocks; on the floor beside him sat a little boy holding a Coke can. When I absentmindedly raised my empty Coke can to my lips, the cartoon boy on TV raised his Coke can. When I looked up at Bullwinkle, the cartoon boy looked up at his moose.

"Bring me another Coke," Bullwinkle said.

"Bring me another Coke," the moose on TV said.

The cartoon boy and I stood up, and he walked off-screen as I went into the kitchen, and returned on-screen when I brought Bullwinkle his Coke. Neither the cartoon boy nor I had Cokes of our own. We weren't thirsty.

Bullwinkle and I watched cartoons of ourselves watch cartoons of themselves until Bullwinkle finally drank all of my Cokes.

His hoof tapped the TV's ON/OFF button, then tapped the VCR's EJECT button. A cassette emerged. "Bring me that," he said.

I took out the cassette and examined its label, written in characters that may have been Greek, or Hebrew, or Arabic, or Kryptonese for all I knew.