Thanks for the good messages and thoughts during my unpleasant dunking into the relentlessly deep pool of Blech.

One of the issues weighing on me to which others are relating is our country’s creepy economic free fall. Readers from the future, don’t tell us how it turned out! The suspense, however, is killing us. Killing. Us.

I wrote to my friend Lisa L, asking “when is the government going to issue me one of those barrels-with-suspenders getups and a can of pencils?” To which she replied “I didn’t know that we would get a can of pencils with our barrel and suspenders. That’s great news!”

Jon Carroll wrote a column in a similar vein, making himself feel better by thinking that, if we’re going to have another Depression, it should be 1930s style — with Busby Berkeley musicals, canasta, and Edward Everett Horton running around in a tux. (you know I like that imagery.)

The campus on which I work gets punched extra hard in the face, economic future-wise, as we are a state school (and California’s budget, if you didn’t know, is a pile of crap that other piles of crap look down upon with withering gazes.)

To soften the blow of the news that we will have to chop breathtaking chunks out of our department’s sad budget, the powers that be at the school printed up and distributed the handy disaster guide, pictured above.

Nice to know that soapy water will take care of a radioactive coworker and that we should be suspicious of “excessive or inadequate postage” on packages (“Apparently every package I’ve ever sent can now be classified as ‘suspicious,'” observes Violet.)

So maybe I’ll feel better if I just follow some of this disaster advice:

• Remain calm (bomb threat)
• Avoid provocation (civil disturbance or demonstration)
• Run in a zigzag pattern (active shooter)
• Stay away from the beach (tsunami)

But enough of this, I need to crouch under my desk for a while. I’ll see you on November 1 as I embark on Year Three of Nablopomo, god save my soul.