An ordinary man gets an inch and a half of mention in the newspaper after stumbling into a low stakes rescue — and the small bit of fame sends him spiraling down a dark, egotistical path.

A witty high school student experiences daily name-calling, insults, and bullying by his peers. He resolves to defy everyone who undermines him by beating the high jump state record at his school's track meet.

In his new job as an English professor, Tarzan finds himself annoyed by his students, hounded by his department chair, and alienated by the world around him, with solace only from his girlfriend Jane. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

A man tells his life story leading up to his suicide, attempting to explain the seemingly-inescapable mental paradoxes he found himself facing in his quest to be an authentic person, which reinforced, time after time, his belief that he was a fraud.

Cutthroat department politics leave a young English professor in danger of losing his job and falling into obscurity. To save himself, he seizes on a playful lie that soon spirals far out of his control.

When he comes back home from work to find that his wife has been cheating on him, a mad scientist builds a time machine to go back in time and ensure that her mother never gives birth to her, but things don’t turn out as expected.

A man contemplates suicide after losing his high-paying job that supported his lavish lifestyle and he finds an unlikely therapist in a slow-witted townsperson.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

On the Great Plains, an aging farmer and his wife struggle to sell their produce amid an increase in frozen food manufacturing. The farmer must figure out how to avoid the fate of his neighbors, who were pushed out of business and into welfare dependence.

A successful gentleman whose ventures have recently failed goes on a miserable quest to find a seam of ore, following a questionable character who claims to have found it.