Smoking a lot seems more refreshing than sleep, but I am still not getting anything done: 5.25.04

This week finds our cranky heroine feeling lazy and out-of-sorts. So much out-of-sorts that she is referring to herself in the third person.

So, I finished up with all that Raymond Chandler, and moved on to a new author blitz: Rick Moody. I�ve already read some of his stuff but came across everything I hadn�t read yet in a used bookstore a few weeks ago. So convenient. But man, he makes Richard Yates seem like �Leave it to Beaver;� all of a sudden Cheever�s Bullet Park looks like Mayberry. Not to mince words, the guy is a total downer. He makes me, well, moody.

Aren�t the dog days still supposed to be in cute little puppy form? It�s only May and it�s like Clifford the Big Red Dog is panting all over us already. But the season is not all bad. Cicadas may be the best cure for writer�s block. I keep hearing people trying to come up with the perfect simile for their sound. Anne Tyler described them in one of her books as a sound �like a rusty zipper being pulled up and down.� Not really. I�ve heard �like a car alarm,� which is sort of applicable to the weird nighttime hum, but certainly not to the full daylight effect. I�ve heard �like a lawn mower,� (boring) and one person said it sounds like opening and closing sewing shears really quickly. Kind of. Here�s mine:

By the middle of the day, the bugs sound like millions of old ladies shaking Yahtzee dice in the woods.