Gills or Tails

At lunch the other day, we had an in-depth discussion concerning the following rhetorical question: Would you rather have gills or an animal tail?

You'd think that on the surface, the answer would be fairly clear, because gills are much cooler since they allow you to swim underwater without having to come up for air. However, most people needed a few more specifics. Irina wanted to know what kind of tail it would be. She said, Because if it's a horse tail, I could just grow my hair and let it blend in. And, she pointed out, horse's really have hair instead of fur, so she could cut it and donate it to cancer patients. We decided that it could be a horse tail, if that's what she wanted. She chose gills. Celia wanted to clarification as to where the gills would appear. Like, it would be much nicer if the gills were on your sides, somewhere inconspicuous. It might be a more difficult choice if the gills were in your neck and if they puffed out when you got emotional. That might make them a much less attractive choice. If I had to have a tail, I would like a thin cat tail, like a cheetah maybe. Of course, I'd probably develop the bad habit of chewing on the end of it so it would be all raggedy.

Celia had another question--would you rather lose a foot or lose your sense of taste? We almost all said we would rather lose our sense of taste, because going footless would make us less attractive to the opposite sex. Isn't that sad? I can see most guys being like, I'll go without the foot! I'll get a prosthetic foot and like, use it as a weapon. We did have to probe the question a little more...Did not having a sense of taste mean we would also lose our sense of smell? Because if not, Celia said that she would just always eat with the plate up against her nose. See, we're always looking for the loophole.

This guy I work with told me today that Graham Green wrote 500 words per day, whether he was feeling well or not, at home or abroad, with or without an idea. And he would stop exactly at the 500th word. I think that's awesome. I write about 250 words or maybe more--two notebook pages a day, but it's all journaling. My journals lately have been colossally boring, consisting mainly of entries about how often I exercised or what I ate or maybe a dream I had the previous night (you will be relieved to learn that I won't go in-depth about my dreams; just know that they are almost always stressful and often involve me driving a car under duress).