I wish someone had told me that playing Liszt, reading poetry, indulging in melancholic loves and drinking water could give you stomach problems…

Do you ever have one of those days when you’re reading, taking painfully detailed notes (because you don’t have money for books and incessantly move around and are forced to borrow everything from the library), and a character description pops up and you think, “Oh…hmm…that sounds suspiciously familiar…”…?

You’re with me so far?

Then, are you seized by terror, because it’s Flaubert, and if you are identifying (even entirely superficially) with one of his characters then something must be seriously wrong with you because this typologizing gesture, in which the very outermost characteristics are portrayed, merely points to many sordid and deeply buried constructions of the psyche which likely indicate something no more benign than total neurosis?

Yeah…that’s a normal thing…

But here’s the lesson for us all… It’s not the dairy, it’s not the gluten, it’s probably not even the high fructose corn syrup (though you should stop eating that anyway…) It’s the melancholy, the pale skin-blue eyes combination, and the fact that you look like a wood nymph straight out of a creepy scandinavian fairy tale. In short, you’re a neurotic white person who reads too much. That’s what’s wrong with your stomach.