I'll show them all. I will be a bear.

One of the reasons I chose to study biology was that secretly I believed that someday I will have to face every single animal ever in a one-on-one gladiator style battle held in an arena reflective of their natural habitat.

Whew, I feel better letting that off my chest.

I used to think I could take on a bear. Or at least outrun one. After viewing David Attenborough's series on mammals, I now know that I can't outrun a bear. Not across open land. My only chance is if we battle in a very dense forest. Then I can keep running away until the bear dies of heart disease or loneliness.

So I chalk that one up as a loss, but I expect to score big points against most of the rodent order and the dugongs won't be any trouble now that Steller's Sea Cow is out of the picture.

The marsupials should be a wash.

Moose and elephants and bison will happily stomp the shit out of me in any direct confrontation so my plan is to slowly encroach upon and destroy their habitat...in the arena.

Most primates will be challenged to a game of chicken-fighting. In elementary school, this meant two people hanging from the monkey bars and kicking at the each other until someone fell. Pound-for-pound, most of the damn dirty apes are stronger, faster, and bitey-er than me but I have hella longer legs. Advantage=Guillermo. [Update: Why didn't anyone tell me about the Zimbabwean Long-Legged Kicking Gibbon?!]

I have yet to form a comprehensive strategy for defeating the Cetaceans, but I am contemplating winning over their hearts and minds and setting up a framework. Definitely gonna set up a framework.

So in answer to your question, I am giving my future plenty of thought.

I am reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Between this book and living vicariously through Sibbitt's blog, I have begun to yearn for the wild open spaces. Now might be an opportune time, since I was fired from my position as warehouse-boy at the end of December and Arizona State University now has snipers atop every parking structure where they sit patiently and roll cigarettes with stale tobacco and strips of paper from "Wanted" posters with my face on them.

I've been sustaining myself by doing carpentry for local playhouses. I'm not terribly good at it, but I'm learning. And not just carpentry, but also lighting and sound and welding and even some modern dance. (You want to see jazz hands? I can show yoos all some jazz hands.)

The work is varied and plentiful and the hours are odd enough that I think I could thrive on this. It also provides a certain degree of flexibility in the schedule. Sort of. Once on a job, I could be on that job for most hours of the day for days at a stretch. But once it's done, I have no commitments. I could sniff around for work that might pop up in a week or two and then wander off into the desert for a while.

Maybe. I'm going to do a bit of wandering tomorrow morning. I can think of no better place to read Desert Solitaire than in the desert.