Here I am, less than a month into my new column, and I’ve run out of things to talk about. Maybe I could just reuse an old blog post I wrote for decaturian.com last year? It’s not like anyone other than my mom actually read them, so it’s barely cheating.

Just called Mom for advice. Turns out she didn’t read them, either.

Maybe Reddit will give me some inspiration. I’ll just browse r/all for a few – oh god why did I click on that? What would make someone’s kidneys look like that? It’s called polycystic kidney disease? I should look that up. Just a quick excursion over to Wikipedia…nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Their photo is even worse. Abort mission, ex-out, DELETE.

How can I be expected to write a cogent, thoughtful column with THAT haunting me? Brain bleach is required. I just need a few photos of cute animals to counteract the medical horror of 20 pound kidneys. But, I don’t want to completely waste time…I know, I’ll go to r/awwducational! Get my fluffy with a side of knowledge! Maybe something there will give me a writing idea.

So many adorable animals here. And look, I’m learning already! The Peruvian town of Churin has an annual Guinea Pig Festival, including…those guinea pigs are wearing tiny hats. They are dressed like people with tiny hats. Where is this town? Peru? What’s their deal with guinea pigs? I’ll just do a quick Google search of “Peru guinea pig” before getting back to work.

“Top 10 Things to Eat in Peru?” “Peruvian cuisine?” “Could I bring myself to eat a guinea pig?”

No, no I could not. But apparently Peruvians could, and they like to dress their prey up in adorable outfits beforehand.

“From Pets To Plates: Why More People Are Eating Guinea Pigs?” That link’s from NPR, I should read that. I like NPR; just reading something of theirs makes me feel smart—

pretentious, but smart. Earned pretention. Which completely goes against the concept of pretention, but whatever.

And the page isn’t loading. Stupid Internet. I really should talk to my landlord about possibly upgrading that somehow. Oh well, I guess I should just buckle down and write the damn column. Here we go. Let’s Talk About…

You know what? I still have data left this month for my phone. I could just Reddit from there.