This week's headlines

• I manage to get a passport photo that doesn't suck.
• Mom calls to let me know that the skateboarding bulldog will be appearing on Oprah this Wednesday.
• Coffee shop employees discover my "alternate establishments" tactic to not seem like a complete loafer, which may lead to developing a hobby.
• A mustachioed debauchee follows me in his van and offers me a date midday. Could Greenfield actually be a safer town at night?
  
• I am visited by the "Ghost of birthdays past" including photographic evidence of a mutual and decidedly amateur lap-dance, as well as a half-eaten cake, on which I am nonetheless blowing the candles out for a second go at my wish.
• My 20's end much the way the 20's did, with extreme deflation. Dirty 30's to commence this weekend. A recent acquaintance eases the potential fear with this statement: "Turning 30 is no big deal. I've done it a few times."
  

Stomp your feet and go for it

The male Blue-footed Booby initiates romance with a measured stomping of his feet and wing display. The ritual attracts a female who will lead him to reproductive victory if all goes well, if he doesn't, say, trip over one of his smurfy toes or overestimate his stock's appeal to the potential leading lady. It's not as though a discerning female booby has a lot to distinguish one mate from another, so she most likely sorts them on technicalities, vigor, foot shade, wing symmetry. And if she's not interested, she just walks away, doesn't awkwardly apologize or say they should be friends. She doesn't have to worry whether accepting a drink is a promise of something more, as there's a clear line in the volcanic sand between her and the world of slightly smaller, slightly beadier-eyed males. The dance is an explicitly balls-out statement of interest on the part of the male, a limb he's just going to have to climb out on if he wants to pass his illustrious genes along. I'm sure it takes an exceptional amount of confidence to know what you want and go for it via a goofy riverdance reenactment, but that's what gets the play in the Galapagos.