My 25th year spent as a sentient conglomeration of recycled matter hurtling around an ancient nuclear explosion has been good times, straight up. So far, anyway. It's possible that tomorrow the invisible string that holds Earth in orbit will snap and we'll fly off into the ether like a broken paddle ball. The sun will send up solar flares that would appear exactly like the face of a disappointed child were there still anyone in existence who knew what a disappointed child looked like.

If it does, though, I will take comfort knowing that in riding my bike to work to help the environment, though futile, will temporarily make me the fastest bike rider in the universe.

Look Ma, no hands.

I saw The Pillowman, a play by Martin McDonagh. I did a bit of work on that set (all the reviews raved about the amazing puttying job) and earned tickets as well as my minimum wage. I enjoyed it very much .

Today I dismantled the set, put it in a big truck, and laid it to rest in a dusty warehouse. So it goes. It's kind of hard taking a down a set. Emotionally, I mean. Imagine watching your childhood playground being torn down. A playground you helped build. A new playground will go up in its place. All you can do now is try not to forget.

The afternoon of the play I met Jaclyn at the bookstore and we conspired to place our biographies inside over-sized coffee table books about the impact of birthdates. We also plotted to create a companion book for The Pig of Happiness.



The title will be The Otter of Despair.



The otter has been holding that clam for three days. In the book he tries to work up the motivation to crack it open. It's going to be easy to illustrate it, too. He'll just keep raising it up halfway, slowly lowering back down, raising it, lowering it, raising, raising, raising, oh, lowering it again.

In the end he will fail to wrap seaweed around himself at night and drift out into the open ocean. But he'll still have that clam.

I guess there's a little otter of despair inside of all of us.