After living out my lifelong dream of being a circus clown, Circus Vargas owners Katya and Nelson invited me to live out my other lifelong dream of doing the trapeze.

As you can see, I started out a little stiff as if I might be suffering from a medical condition ... rigor mortis, perhaps ...

Katya shouted from the platform: "Bend ze legs. Bend! Bend!"

With great effort I overcame the rigor mortis and managed to ... to ... beeeend ...

I felt like a GI Joe figure that curves only at the waist. Slowly I returned to my original plywood position and swayed lifeless, colorless, terrified, until the trapeze came to a stop and Nelson coaxed me to release my Kung Fu Grip.

The tentmaster, David, was so amused that he invited me to travel with the circus (no kidding) and do a Terrified Clown Trapeze act; and though I stayed up late to consider it, I think I'll stick to my other, other lifelong dream -- waking up in one piece.

As if it weren't enough to wake up to ALARM clocks and fight RUSH hour traffic to meet our DEADLINES, here's something to really help your life slip away...

I think they should zoom out to show the calendar by centuries so that we can view our life as a blip in eternity. Then they can flash pictures from the Hubble Telescope to show Earth as a whisp of cosmic dust until our brain implodes and we qualify for disability. I mean, ideally.

Now back to work. Tick tock tick tock.