Ogden Nash: Besides pollution and erosion / We now must face a goose explosion.

Yesterday I dig out the industrial glue and reconstruct the exploded goose from last weekend. No problem. The cracks are an aesthetic improvement. Am feeling better about 2012 already.

As shown in the first photo above, after I reduce the number of pieces from twenty-six down to two, and am all set to close up the bird for good, I inscribe a message to future goose-breakers (most likely me) inside the tail, along with the dates of breakage and repair. How often does one get a chance to write on a sealed object’s inside surface? To hide a quote-unquote Easter egg inside a bird? At the time this seems clever, but now I kind of wish I hadn’t done it — I feel like from now on whenever I see the goose around the house I’m always just going to think of the concealed message inside it. I can see this eventually bothering me. It’s possible I’ll have to re-break the bird so I can blacken the writing out.

Also: Somehow I’m reminded of that old, bad Groucho Marx joke (though it involves the wrong animal): Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Department of Bad Starts: Just after midnight on New Year’s Eve I accidentally drop a full champagne flute on the floor. And on New Year’s Day I accidentally knock a vintagey folk-art ceramic goose off a table onto the floor. Both items fight the concrete and lose. Better them than me. Fragments of shallow symbolism fly all over the place and have to be carefully swept and vacuumed up. The goose ends up in twenty-six grabbable pieces and can probably be glued back together. Maybe if I leave a few pieces missing I can drink champagne out of it.