I was relieved to cart a trash sack full of clothes to the Salvation Army, until I walked past the front window and saw a sign that read “50% off sale!”

What’s up with that?  If one place in the world should be offering “everyday low prices,” it’s the Salvation Army.  I thought their slogan was “You can trust us to give you the absolute lowest price possible, because you know if we don’t we’re going straight to Hell.” What’s next, flashing blue lights?

Donating the clothes is weird too, because the guy smiles cheerfully at you and gives you a blank receipt that you can use for tax purposes.  I looked at the paper and my evil angel started chattering at me: “That suit you just donated wasn’t a battered old rag from J.C. Penney’s; it was a brand-new Armani.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.” But then you look up at the smiling man holding your clothes and you think, “Oh yeah, the honor system.” You can’t treat the transaction like a business expense reimbursement, where the taxi driver gives you a blank receipt and you later fill it out: “Cab driver did not understand quickest route from airport to hotel.  We took a long route, went through Oregon.  Took four days.  Full fare: $3,723.”

Completely unrelated: My friend Wendy and I hiked at Pt. Reyes and on the beach I saw the strangest thing--a moist, clearly alive sea anemone, surrounded by wet sand.  I said, “I’ve never seen one just sitting on land and away from the water,” and Wendy poked at me and I looked up and saw that there were hundreds of them, like little pulsating balls of moss, scattered across the entire shore.  The tide had withdrawn so far that they had no choice but to wait, collecting their moisture as best they could until the water returned six hours later.  The scene contained a sad kind of beauty.

Of course, I ruined it by talking about a new idea for a screenplay, a white-knuckle thriller about beleaguered beach organisms harassed by both the ocean tide and government agents, entitled “Anemone of the State.”