The world's sent me bushels of signs that Time Like an Ever-Rolling Stream bears every lil thing away, but the most vanity-puncturing result of all has to be the increased, now more or less constant, need for (as somebody once put it) concealer in a drum. No matter how much sleep, no matter if there is pollen in the air or not, no matter whatever, there are always The Circles. Corrrrr! Looks like somebody plays the reverse telescope trick on me all the time.

So, the Sopranos? I'm still watching, only I've gotten so good at avoiding violence on the show that it's now making other awful bits--such as watching Janice trick the widower Baccalieri into marriage--newly unbearable. Yikes.

'Suddenly, two hairy-nosed otters!'

I KNOW I'm not the only one who read THAT headline this morning and got excited. Hunh! HUNH!!

Field researchers have sighted the hairy-nosed otter, the world's rarest, in a national park in southern Vietnam, a conservation group announced on Thursday. Nguyen Van Nhuan, a research officer at Vietnam's Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Programme, said he came face-to-face with two of the endangered animals in March while doing night observations in U Minh Ha National Park in the Mekong Delta. The species was believed extinct in the 1990s, but has recently been seen in several South-East Asian countries. Nhuan's was the first sighting in Vietnam since 2000. "We could not believe our eyes," Nhuan said. "Suddenly, two hairy-nosed otters! I've never had a special feeling like that."

I think one can only assume that with the rise of the shaven look--Parisian, Hollywood, Brazilian waxings--the influence of Otterboy on the public's ideal of the otter silhouette--the preference for small-clawed otters--the rise of the metrosexual smooth coat otter--Eurasian v North American Otter Krewz--that the hairy-nosed otter felt pressure to conform and was hiding out until the zeitgeist shifted and their unkempt, nay, carefree nose hair style gained a more sympathetic home in the otter-watching population. Hence hairy-nosed otter communes all through the Delta with their prevalence of pot-smoking and hemp otterwear.