The Blobfish is a creature made of gelatinous tissue that allows it to float around the deep ocean floor, compensating for near-total lack of muscle by being totally nondiscriminating in its eating habits. Sound like you? Quelle coincidence! You and I have the same totem animal this month!

Blobfish energy is flaccid, weak-willed, and…I don’t know, whatever. When Blobfish floops and plurbles up through the plumbing of your subconscious and into the toilet bowl of your conscious attention, it’s time to relinquish all resolve, put on your bathrobe, and eat every last bit of pudding in the fridge.  If you can’t find [...]

Recently, due to several misguided decisions, I found myself having a sleepover with five friendly but ambitious dogs. The entire night was one long dominance display. No sooner had I settled each pooch onto a separate cushion than the biggest one got up, grabbed a chew toy, and stood over the others, proclaiming (in dog language): “I am Bjorn! And I am Pack Leader! For this toy is mine! And I own this toy! And the toy is my property!” and so on.

It reminded me so much of Harvard, I got a little misty.

We humans use many “toys” to [...]

The Tardigrade is a truly wondrous creature: an eight-legged microscopic beastie also known as the “moss piglet” that can go without food or water for more than ten years, live in the vacuum of space, stew in boiling water, and keep waddling onward, good as new.  Tardigrade energy is the totem of people who just will not freaking STOP, the spirit animal of all who believe everyone needs to hear about their gruesome dental history, their endless arguments with ex-spouses, the exploits of their moss-piglet children.  Which reminds me: Tardigrade is also the totem of Things That Aren’t As Cute As [...]

Fear is a terrible sensation, one we never, ever want to feel. How lucky we are to live in a time and place where it’s so often possible to avoid the things that scare us most: violence, disease, natural disasters, dangerous animals, and, at least until the very end, death. Instead, we get to sit around on our widening behinds watching television shows…about violence, disease, natural disasters, dangerous animals, and death.

Hmm.

I noticed a long time ago that fear often comes packaged with enthrallment. We don’t look away from accidents or guns; we give them our rapt attention. This tendency [...]

Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a deboned turkey. If turducken is your totem animal, you have multiple layers of limp energy with no solid internal structure whatsoever.  

Turducken energy is complicated, overstuffed, and excessive. When Turducken waddles onto your table, you can be sure your goose is cooked on many levels. For example,

you may be trapped in a terrible relationship, unrewarding job, or unsatisfying ménage a trois because you lack the backbone God gave your feathered brethren. Call on Turducken to help you absorb [...]

The Aardwolf, as I’m sure you know, is a stripy hyena-like creature from Africa that can excrete a full tenth of its body weight in one magnificent defecation. (How much would you excrete if you were an Aardwolf?  Would it be more or less than you can lift?)

A single Aardwolf can consume a quarter of a million termites in one night. Along the way, it slurps up a lot of sand and other assorted detritus, much like a child in Sunday school learning that God is infinitely compassionate, and will curse all who break certain dietary restrictions.

If you’ve inhaled [...]