I have been very busy for the last couple of weeks. Busy enough to forget about the minutiae of my own life – things like keeping my apartment tidy, responding to emails, sleeping, eating meals that aren't served out of white paper sacks, cleaning my face, and taking plenty of fluids. (I apologize to anyone who has been caught in the crossfire, with regards to this.) As a result, I've been battling a pretty terrible cold for the last several days and I can't find my left shoe.

I've also not committed a single word to paper, really, that wasn't some kind of contribution to a very short comedy set. (It's amazing how reductive comedy is. I've been spending all this time massaging and crafting and chipping away at this ridiculously small piece of stand-up so that everyone – from Swarthmore graduates to fruit wine hobos – will find something funny in it. The first step in this process was removing all references to Anton Chekhov, and replacing them with a loud, continuous fart sound. Problem solved.) So, out of novelty and guilt, I sat down this afternoon and started writing something. Here's what came out first:

"I hate performing for cats."

Yeah, it's true. Sure, I wrote more. A lot more. Like this:

"You start playing to a cat audience and, if they’re not looking elsewhere – at a beetle, for instances, or the flickering of a light bulb – they’re still paying half-attention to you. Whereas other audiences will indicate boredom or disinterest by flagging down a waitress or whispering to their neighbor, a cat will just take a shit where it stands, and then spend the next five minutes covering it up with some napkins."

And then, a few paragraphs later, in mid-sentence, I got a hold of myself. I am a grown man, writing cat-centric humor. (OK, still writing cat-centric humor.) Nothing could telegraph my loneliness, restlessness, and sense of personal defeat more than a winky passage dedicated to the pitfalls of performing in front of cats. My point is, you deserve better. (That is sort of the mantra of this site, and the rest of my life.) And as soon as I find that fucking shoe, you'll get yours. We all will.