Life is sure getting complicated for Bill Lawry (Robert Klein). His company is seling a new line of medical equipment and poor Bill has just one week to memorize 67 new products. Biothermic dilator, Electromyograph. Entero-something-or-other. He studies until the wee hours and falls into a fitful sleep. Next morning, as he leaves for work, his neighbor happily informs Bill that his dog Ginger had her litter last night. There were nine puppies, "and that's quite a few for a small dog like an encyclopedia." Huh? A puzzled Bill heads for the office, where a young co-worker asks his advice on a good place to take a pretty girl for dinosaur. Come again? That afternoon, Bill hears people saying things like, "Wine mental eight van cattle renting jupiter." Everybody but Bill has a new vocabulary!

A woman discovers a pendant which allows her to freeze time. A housewife who finds an amulet that enables her to "freeze" the entire world around her merely by saying ‘'shut up." Eventually this cute ability finds itself confronting the specter of nuclear annihilation. 

The story follows a man who finds that a double of himself has moved into his apartment and is taking over his life. A pushy fellow named Peter mistakenly dials his own telephone number in a bar and is astonished to find a nice guy named Peter answering at the other end. Peter is ‘both victim and victor of a brief struggle for the custody of a soul.