I'm fairly sure if there is a God, he and I are in total agreement about you

I've been chainsmoking, I'm not gonna lie. It's cause I got in such a funk about how much I've been eating working from home, so I guess I decided smoking was better? Anyway, it's making me sick, and my face keeps breaking out, and I only had one glass of water yesterday, also possibly the day before, so listen I'm pretty sure I'm gonna die. ( In my head, drinking lots of water negates inhaling poison. ) Point is, this summer, the cigarettes have got to go. And I have to drink more water. And stock my kitchen with something edible that doesn't have any calories. Or get a salt lick, which is basically the equivalent of what I've been eating. I am a goddamn deer. A chainsmoking deer.

I've also been freaked out about my hands. I type all day for work, and use a mouse constantly. Then I get off work and I type my own stuff for a few hours. It's like 12 hours of typing daily, at least. So the other day I woke up and my hand hurt like hell. My first thought is "oh my god, I'm getting carpal tunnel and this job will have ruined all chances I have of being a writer ever" and I spent a large amount of time trying to think of jobs I could do that didn't involve using my hands. Which was a very short, depressing, and pretty immoral list. I told a couple a friends about my freak out, and their first responses, across the board, were "well, voice recognition software is better now." Which then had me imagining a scenario where I was never able to use my hands again, like losing my hand in a car door, or sleeping on it wrong and losing all the blood and having to have it amputated. I always sleep with my hands crunched and folded underneath me. Like a cat, only...not. I tried to explain to one guy that I could never "talk" a novel out, that writing is completely different from speaking. Like, you could never "talk" out a painting, right? He told me I would just have to learn. Which I suppose I could eventually. But probably I would just give up, and do podcasts. Where I dressed my wrist stump up like a puppet sidekick and remade music videos.

I really wanted to drive down to Louisiana and Mississippi this fall, and see the Gulf and the bayous and the crazy. But now that area of America has been ruined, probably forever. I know it's horribly selfish to be most upset that the oil spill has taken away my roadtrip dreams, but what the fuck. Should I be focusing on the larger picture, so that I become dizzy and have to start pinching myself with rubberbands to stay focused? I feel a certain amount of shrug about it now, cause its SO big and so disastrous. Like, I don't think America realizes BP has destroyed the Gulf. Like, FOREVER guys. Forever meaning at least two lifetimes. It hasn't sunk in to the country's consciousness. There is no repairing it , there is no cleaning it up. That area is fucking poisoned indefinitely. Those fishing industries are gone. Those ecosystems are extinct. The end. It's like we just assume that everything will bounce back, it'll be cleaned up like downtown New Orleans, and maybe it will take some good ol American gumption and patience, but eventually everything will be just like it was. Um, no.

Maybe now that American Idol is ending, people will start to get it. Nobody should be buying BP gas at all right now, or ever again. People who buy BP gas are traitors to America.

I also talked to someone who was dealing with all the recent flooding down south of Ohio. Which brings up something I think you all need to recognize as truth. Cleveland is by a giant freshwater sea, has temperate climate, doesn't get tornadoes or earthquakes or mudslides or crazy hail twelve times a year. It has super cheap property right now because everything is being foreclosed on. It's farmland. Cleveland is the place to be when the climate change starts a comin'. No, I know, it's already here. Creep creep creep. But still, best place to live in the country, honest. You are going to be coming in droves to get our freshwater, and we are going to be holding you off with shotguns, which is why you should insinuate yourself in the community now. That should be our new city PR slogan :
Cleveland. We Have All the Water.

What else? I read the funniest thing in the NY Times Dining section today. They have an etiquette column now, called Ask FloFab, which number one, WORST NAME EVER. This woman looks like she shits pearl necklaces, but her column sounds like she wants to sell you a home pedicure kit or a patented weight loss system. Anyway, so one of the questions was "When you get finger bowls, what do you do with them?" I thought this was pretty obvious, you use them to clean your fingers, duh. But then again, I read too many novels set in the Dawn of the British Empire. Mabye the uninitiated (read: uncouth) think you get all Jesusy and wash your feet? What was funny was that in her answer, FloFab mentioned that when SHE has home parties, she wets a bunch of cloth towels with warm water in advance, then presses them in a colander to drain the excess water, then serves them to her guests after the meal, if needed.

I can't tell you exactly why, but I find that fucking hilarious. Useful, but hilarious.

Today it was hot. Like drain the color from the sky, kill the grass hot. It's not the heat that depresses me, but the lack of vivid. I ate a lot of ice, and bobby pinned my hair off my neck. My favorite bra popped an underwire. The cats died in the hallway. I shaved them and sent their fur to the Gulf. All the fans came out and were immediately useless.