inessential by Brent Simmons

May 2007

Nick b-day

Happy Birthday to Nick! He turns 40 today.

Nick writes, “A few weeks ago I attended a ritzy charity event, and I swear half the people there—both men and women—had ridiculous stretched faces. They might as well had worn badges that said, ‘I paid a plastic surgeon a ton of money to look this silly.’ I sure as hell don’t want to get old like that.”

If cats were scientists

If cats were scientists—biologists, say—they’d be very patient scientists. They’d keep a clean bench—cleanliness is next to felis, after all—and they’d be very careful as they filled beakers and centrifuged things and ran blots and cared for their cell cultures and everything.

They’d be great scientists, I think. Until they knocked everything to the floor and chased it and bit it.