don’t worry, it’s not what you think
Yesterday morning I came downstairs to find that pattern of brown marks on my carpet. Naturally, having an animal in the house, I suspected the worst, but on careful examination “by careful I mean not sticking my nose in it – and no, I didn’t taste it” I determined it was in fact the most sublime of brown substances, chocolate. “I suppose it could have been carob, but my mass spectrometer is out for calibration.” Momentary relief was replaced by panic when I realized that <a href=”Hastings might have eaten some overlooked piece of candy from the party. I checked him over quickly, apologized for my poop suspicions, and then did a web search for “cats and chocolate”
If your cat has eaten, licked, smelled or even looked at chocolate, he will be dead by the time you get to the end of this paragraph. But unless your house looks like the deck of a tramp steamer full of refugees after a typhoon, he’s probably fine.
“I hope you’re not reading this on your lunch break.”
Just to be safe, I stuck a garden hose in him and ran it for about ten minutes, then squeezed him for a while.
Still, that left the mystery of how they got there. I suddenly realized they had some of the same geometric patterns as crop circles. Obviously, the marks on my carpet are a message from our alien overlords “and if someone wants to get my attention, chocolate is a good medium to use”. After studying the patterns for quite some time, I have deciphered the meaning:
Happy birthday. Eat whatever the hell you want.
Yes, today is my birthday. I am 38, and what a useless birthday that is. When I turned 35 I became eligible to run for president, and passed gratefully out of the MTV demographic. “I have since had the opportunity to indicate my age group on a survey as “35-70″ Thanks.”
Thirty-six was at least mathematically interesting. Bill, who got there a month before me, left me a message saying, “Just wanted to know if you felt like four nine-year olds, two 18-year olds, or like me, half of a 72-year old””
Thirty-seven and 38 just seem like way stations on the road to 40, but I’m okay with that. I know a lot of people are nostalgic for their 20s. Not me. I was a total dipshit back then. If you don’t believe me, check out the haircut in my <a href=”1988 passport photo.