Mentally, anyway. When surfing the internet starts to feel ennervating instead of enjoyable, you know, you have to take a break.

Besides I've clean run out of things to say. So Peter Jennings died and I suppose people will have some things to say about that, but I just . . . don't. I could say that the media didn't waste a minute turning it into a "SMOKING KILLS" story, and that I loathe this because (1) we know and (2) Jennings knew and (3) for Pete's sake, I was not fond of the man, or at least his public persona, but could we let him rest in peace for a minute before we go all Surgeon General on his dead ass? No, that's right, we can't, because journalism is a sacred trust and a higher calling and a public service and DID YOU KNOW SMOKING WILL KILL YOU?

The best ones are the outlets that claim people are quitting because Peter Jennings died. Firstly, I doubt that. People will say any damn thing if you man-on-the-street them. Secondly, how nauseating. Why turn an ordinary human being into St. Jennings of the Blessed Pall Malls? Wait, I know the answer to this one: Because if it helps save even one life, it will be worth it!

I'll tell you why I want to quit, myself: It's not the death part. It's the home oxygen-dependent part, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease part--it's all the little and not-so-little health aggravations you go through before it kills you. It's knowing that the health care providers treating you think you're being nothing so much as a stupid, obstinate, waste of their time. Seriously, would you want to be putting smokers on ventilators all the time? Wouldn't that feel a little Sisyphean after awhile? Of course it would. I imagine it wouldn't be long before you'd be thinking, "You know something, Mrs. Kravitz, you're 82 and being intubated for the third time this year, and you want a medal for finally kicking the habit a whole six years ago. Well, screw you. I'm not giving you a medal because we don't give medals to idiots. Shoulda quit 40 years ago, idiot."

And what do you say to a headline like this besides, "Duh?" Teenagers don't think anything can kill them. I know; I'm the one who used to go skulking around the neighborhood at three in the morning, deliberately staying off the main roads and looking for dimly-lit streets to avoid . . . the cops. Oh yeah, teenagers are just fulla smarts like that. You can't get an addicted 40 year-old smoker to face the realities of lung cancer; now we expect teenagers to do it?

But I'll fall in line for a minute: You shouldn't smoke. You're better off stopping sooner rather than later. But I'm going to argue that you should do that not so much because it can kill you, but because of everything it screws up in your life in the meantime. Can't date nonsmokers. Can't sit through three-hour movies without missing a few scenes. You get weird pains all the time, everywhere, and every time, I mean every time, you think "Oh no, this is it--here comes the cancer." It's not worth it to smoke because of the anxiety it gives you alone--never mind the cost and the hassle and the nagging, the nagging, the neverending will you please just STOP it already nagging, from people who want you to quit.

So thank you, news people, for adding to the nagging. Because when it comes to turning smokers into ex-smokers, nothing else has been proven so effective. That's why nobody smokes anymore, right? Nobody smokes and we're all eating our vegetables and loving our bodies, ourselves. And listen, I made that up about Jennings being dead. Really he's having a great time on the Riviera right now, and he hopes to catch up with you all later, maybe this winter in Gstaad?