It won't be long before Sam undergoes his little procedure, the glinting knife poised over his pudgy midsection, ready to slice out his mystery blob. I can't help but feel anxious, a feeling intensified by the fact that he's going on about his business like it was any other day. The little fool. How often we mistake idiocy for stoicism. When worrying is called for I'm always ready to pick up someone else's slack. Life demands that a certain quantity of useless feeling be deployed in any given situation and when these minimal levels aren't met there is a deleterious imbalance in the global emotional ecosystem. Such unhealthful disharmonies can sometimes trigger bizarre phenomena great distances from their source. If I didn't feel nervous on Sam's behalf, for example, there might be a sudden eruption of inappropriate tittering in a mosque in Yemen, with who knows what consequences. Okay bad example, like anyone would even notice if a few more Muslims got mortally offended over something. How I loathe religions. Anyway, this isn't about some tittering Muslims half a world away but about the fact that my cat faces surgery. There's a sentence you don't read every day. Aren't you glad you stopped by?