The universe loves to toy with me. Evidence?

Object #1: The brown/black BILLY bookcase I bought on impulse at IKEA last month for $59.99 (plus tax).

Object #2: The brown/black BILLY bookcase abandoned at the bottom of the stairs outside my apartment 5 days ago. (Note: This is not the same bookcase. They occupy two different areas of the space-time continuum.) I checked the front and back and the shelf notches, and there is no doubt that this is a BILLY bookcase. Looks like he made friends with the abandoned umbrella that has been there since I moved in.

Considering the length of time that this bookcase has been sitting literally at my doorstep, it’s safe to say it’s been abandoned, probably by the college students who were moving out this week. Soooooo, if I had not been so impulsive at IKEA, I could have scooped up BILLY 1′s twin brother, BILLY 2, for free. As it is, I’m probably going to grab BILLY 2 and put him in the kitchen to use as a huge [...]

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Picture by mgrenner57 used under Creative Commons license.

When I fly, it is inevitable that I start thinking about the meaning of life. No matter the airline or the destination, no matter the time zone or the country, when I look out an airplane window, my spirit soars with awe and my stomach sinks with terror. Looking down on our planet, I can see small square stamps called fields and narrow long lines called roads. The cars speeding down the highway look like ants slowly trudging across a desert. When I zoom out on the world like that, human civilization doesn’t look all that different from an ant colony or a bee hive or a bacterial growth. It makes me wonder, is there a life form out there that would look at our world and diagnose humanity as an odd and not that fascinating fungus?

Then I think of my cats, because I can always bring the subject back to my cats. Java Bean and Officer Krupke don’t know about the recent economic recession or the effects [...]

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