Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

My latest comedy, Bellwether, let me go after everything that bugs me: meetings, Barbie, trendy coffeehouses, those incompetent clerks who refuse to get off the phone to talk to you, and bread pudding.

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?

Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.