i've heard the moons of jupiter are lovely this time of year

I'm suffering from post-partum magazine depression hella hard. So hard that I've been using "hella" at a remarkable rate--something I'm going to have to lose since I'll be back in New York for a week next week. This production cycle weighed heavily on my psyche, and what made it worse was that the Great Albert Pujols suffered a back injury, which started a windfall of big injuries and left my fantasy baseball team in shambles. But it's not only my little world that's turning to shit, so too is the macrocosm, the big picture. Namely the planet Earth.

I don't like to get topical, and I'm not an environmentalist. I don't go "hiking." Nor do I own a pair of sandals or a back pack. I think the environment is lovely and beautiful, and I respect it enough to figure it wants no part of me. If Nature truly wanted to nurse me at her supple bossom, she would consist of only of bunnies and puppies and kittens and Kate Beckinsales and not spiders and mosquitos and the like. However, all those things have the right to survive, I guess, or at least to become extinct in a tasteful manner--like thanks to the slow cycle of evolution or by some super spiffy meteor impact--and not because people like to drive Hummers to Costco.

Tonight, while watching a rerun of LOST with my roommate (I'm going to end up watching the whole thing over again), she said she'd just heard Stephen Hawking had said at some conference that humans would have to leave Earth in order to stave off extinction. What she was referring to was this. It sounds ludicrous, I guess, and normally I'd think so, but Stephen Hawking is like a living brain, so I couldn't help but feel like we are, indeed, pretty well fucked.

Anyway, though I'm sure Mr. Hawking has put a lot of thought into what he said in his Hong Kong speech, I don't think transgalactic imperialism's the way to go. I don't think there is a way to go, really. People are always going to want stuff, and when the oil's all gone, they're just going to clamor for the next thing until that's all used up. It's never going to be enough.

This sort of thing has been pissing me off lately. Maybe because gas prices are almost $4 a gallon (I don't own a car, so I don't really care, I just know that someone's getting really rich off of other people's misery, and I'm tired of people who drive SUVs complaining about the price of gas like it's someone else's fault). I ended up writing a letter through Congress.org to oppose drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (I know, MySpace politics are the new partisan bumper stickers). The letter went to a few California senators and President Bush. So far, the two Democratic senators (Feinstein and Boxer) responded with form letters ensuring me that My Voice Will Be Heard (I'm not holding my breath). All I wrote was that I opposed the proposal and added, "You're smart people. I'm sure you can come up with a better solution. That's what we pay you for, isn't it?"

I really do hope they leave that refuge alone, though I'm not sure why. Probably for my own selfish reasons, like somehow I helped keep this place pure and that makes me a better person than someone who drives a Chevy Tahoe. Or maybe, that when the soccer moms start burning Costcos for the last can of Castrol, or stabbing each other at Chevrons for the last drop of premium, I'll know there's at least one place I can escape to. ...Of course, I'll have to walk there.