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This book is now in its 3rd edition and gives you detailed instructions for taking a shit outdoors. It’s sold 2,500,000 copies. The entirety of existence of life on earth, lasting billions of years, has involved shitting outside on the ground, yet this book exists and is a best-seller.

If you’re in the target market for this book, you might also want Sex In A Tent, an instructional manual for having sex outdoors. Another basic component of mammalian biology that you somehow fail to grasp. Lord knows how you feed yourself.

Alban Odoulamy has been running Puppet Heaven, or puppet shops by other names, in Crystal City for 18 years, but his heart isn’t in it like it used to be.

Odoulamy emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1990s from the small, French-speaking West African country of Benin, where he had worked in production and set design for children’s programming for the state-owned television station. He had been formally trained in Marionette puppetry — the puppets controlled by strings — and worked under a master puppeteer until he came here, where he worked as a concierge for Charles E. Smith before its merger with Vornado.

A year after starting his new job in his new country, he saw a vacant shop in a nearby alley and decided to turn it into his own puppet store and workshop, calling it La Marionette. The shop has moved and changed names twice before finding a permanent home in the Shops at 1750 Crystal Drive, as Puppet Heaven.

Odoulamy is not a shop owner by trade, however. He’s a puppeteer, and he’s done shows around the country — around the world, if you count his home country — but he can’t do them right now.

“I miss the shows,” he said, with the remnants of his French accent still very present in his voice. “Doing them is a full-time job. You have to create your characters, your script and your set. It’s not easy. I was trained to do shows in a studio for television; it’s not like some guy on the street.”

Odoulamy used to have two employees to work the shop while he performed, but business has slowed in recent years. Now, it’s just him, opening the shop at 10:00 a.m. six days a week and closing at 7:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. on Saturdays).

Odoulamy said he approached Vornado a few years ago and told them he was considering closing his shop. To convince him to stay, he said, they gave the shop a renovation. Plus, he says, his shop now has a legacy of customers since it opened in April 1996.

“Just the other day, I had these 23-year-old girls come in the shop and say ‘hi,’” he said. “I didn’t recognize them, but they told me they were two of the first customers at La Marionette and showed me the picture. I love that.”

Odoulamy is 55 now, and he doesn’t know how much longer he wants to keep the shop, despite his loyalty to Vornado/Charles E. Smith. On the contrary, he cherishes each customer who comes in and wants to buy a puppet for their children or themselves.

“I want to keep the tradition of a puppeteer and keep the art alive,” he said. “Everyone enjoys puppets. People still come in and buy Elmo puppets. Some people come in and see the Lamb Chop and they start crying.”

When he goes home every night — just a few blocks away, since he lives in Crystal City — he’s working on a new show, building a new theater and making new puppets.

“I’ve been doing puppets for 31 years,” he said. “I feel like I want to start over. Parents call me all the time and ask me to do shows and I don’t have time. The show is in my heart now, but I want to do it again.”

TechShop, a subscription-based, high-tech workshop, has opened its 20,000-square-foot space at 2110-B Crystal Drive, in the Crystal City Shops.

The shop opened last Wednesday after eight weeks of construction. It offers its members access to millions of dollars worth of equipment to use to build prototypes, new inventions or anything else they can dream up.

“There’s a deficit in people knowing how to make things with their hands,” TechShop’s interim general manager Isabella Iglesias Musachio said. “We’re giving people access to the tools to build their dreams.”

TechShop has computers uploaded with $20,000 of software, a high-powered water jet that can cut through several inches of steel, a fully-equipped wood shop, 3D printers and its most popular item, a laser cutter and etcher.

Memberships cost $349 for three months, $1,095 for a year and $7,500 for a lifetime. TechShop offers corporate memberships for companies, either startups or larger firms, that need to use the equipment to develop new products. TechShop also offers classes to teach how to operate each of the machines, but the classes are sold out until May, according to Iglesias-Musachio.

More than 250 people have purchased memberships so far, Iglesias-Musachio said, and more than 100 military veterans have gotten free memberships through TechShop’s partnership with DARPA.

“Our typical member is anyone,” Iglesias-Musachio said. “You could be sitting next to an engineer, an art teacher or a 12-year-old kid. For a few dollars a day, really, you can have access to more than $1 million worth of equipment. That sort of thing appeals to everyone.”

Crystal City is TechShop’s eighth location nationwide and its second on the East Coast, after its Pittsburgh location, which opened in 2013. Several technology and equipment companies, like the mobile transaction company Square, have been helped along by TechShop’s equipment, Iglesias-Musachio said.

“Crystal City was perfect for our next location because it’s extremely innovative and creative,” she said, noting how many people have peered into the window during buildout. “We were looking for a creative and educated community, and one that is accessible by transit.”

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My new favorite gif

Arlington County firefighters rescued a cat from a townhouse fire early this morning.

Firefighters were called to a home on the 4400 block of Pershing Court in the Barcroft neighborhood around 4:45 this morning for reports of a fire. Units arrived six minutes later and found flames coming out of a front window on the top floor, according to Arlington County Fire Department spokeswoman Lt. Sarah-Maria Marchegiani.

The blaze was quickly extinguished but firefighters found a cat inside the home in “respiratory distress,” Marchegiani said. The cat, which was foaming at the mouth as a result of smoke inhalation, was brought outside and given oxygen. It was then transported to an animal hospital — the VCA SouthPaws Veterinary Specialists & Emergency Center on Route 50 — where it is now listed in stable condition.

There were no human injuries as a result of the fire. The blaze caused about $50,000 in damage.

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the fire, which started in an upstairs bedroom, according to Marchegiani. Other than the cat, the home was unoccupied — its residents were on vacation at the time.

Photo courtesy ACFD