The story I'm about to tell you is a cautionary tale.

In October 2004, I made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno

to promote my book on presidential pets.

But it's not my appearance on the show that I regret. It's what happened next.

After the taping, I went back to my hotel in Universal City.

I hadn't eaten dinner, and the hotel restaurant was offering a seafood buffet.

I can still see it now, a sort of banquet table with tears of crab legs.

I'm pretty sure there were oysters, and dominating the landscape, a mountain of shrimp,

a glistening pink pyramid. How could I resist? By the time I was done that evening,

that bounty of shrimp was less of a pyramid and more of a mound.

The next morning I flew back east, happy as a, well, clam.

But somewhere over the Midwest, I started experiencing turbulence.

An inner turbulence. The choppiness subsided only after 36 hours in and out of bed.

And I knew what was to blame for my condition.

Until that point in my life, I was pro buffet. And I thought, I can't believe that I did that.

Everyone was exhaling on the shrimp. And I don't want to eat other people's exhale.

Right, but I probably that came from bad shrimp, not a human breath.

It could have been other shrimp's breath.

It could have been other shrimp's breath. I mean, let's talk about that.

Everyone can name something they'd like to see banished from the earth.

I'm guessing famine, disease, war, topmost lists. But what are the things just below those

that you wish would disappear? Me? I have at least three, one of which made the list

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