After flocking to the Richfield, MN, Borders like a vulture looking for cheap deals on books I would hesitate to pay full price for, I found myself wandering Minneapolis with a dear friend talking about whatever we could to fill the morning air. It just happened that we made our way to the Minneapolis Central Library where, to our surprise, one T. Coraghessan Boyle (website) was having a reading/signing for his latest book When the Killing’s Done (2011). Boyle is the winner of the 1988 PEN/Faulkner, has written for the New Yorker and all around interesting fellow when you consider the following scene:

Life, says TC Boyle, “is tragic and absurd and none of it has any purpose at all.” He is sitting contentedly with a glass of wine in the west room of his Frank Lloyd Wright house in Montecito, California. “Science has killed religion, there’s no hope for the future with seven billion of us on the planet, and the only thing you can do is to laugh in the face of it all” (The Gaurdian, February 28, 2009).

Never one to not exploit what I can only believe to be Fate for my own profit, I thought this to be a good opportunity to collect content for what by now is on the verge of becoming my generation’s Facebook. My friend and I were only able to catch the last few minutes of the event – in fact, only the question-and-answer period – in the standing-room only auditorium and were fortunate to find ourselves so far in the back that we happened to be one of the first few in line for the signing. Quickly finding ourselves at the front of the line I gave him the typical pitch, finding myself particularly nervous as I did so, able only to find relief when he said “it would be a privilege to draw a giraffe for your website” with the catch that he make it “special.” Where I am sure other websites would be thankful regardless, GDBWSNBDG is a respectable website with its standards so I added a counter-catch saying that it could be anything but a horse, which is something a certain University of Minnesota President misunderstood.

This is what I got:

 

As I squinted my eyes, confused, Boyle clarified that it was actually an alligator eating a giraffe.

Well, OK.