The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Icky: We've discovered a family of opossums living rent-free in our backyard shed. I contacted Jersey City Animal Control, but they're stonewalling me. Not sure what to do. Maybe nothing? I've always thought of 'possums as a sort of hillbilly delicacy, not a varmint that lives in the city. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be rats.

Puzzled: More animal weirdness. While traveling on mass transit today, I observed several seemingly unrelated fellow travelers with animal carriers -- those boxy plastic crates with the wire mesh on the front -- containing cats. Kitties. Pussies. What's going on? Is there a feline-owners convention occurring in the area?

Strangely entertained: This book I'm "reading" (actually listening to), The Pale King, is all about people who work for the IRS, and the narrators (I mean the characters in the book, not the voice talent reading the text) go on and on about how they came to be involved in the "Service" (i.e., the Internal Revenue Service) and, yes, about taxes. But it isn't boring. How can a book about such a seemingly dull subject -- a book largely about, in fact, tedium itself -- be interesting? The author, the late David Foster Wallace, somehow pulled that rabbit out of his hat. Talented guy he was.