Too Much Diet Coke

Bissell, apparently, travels all over the place with a hardcover copy of Infinite Jest, which is surely the most inconvenient thing outside of, like, a chihuahua, to have to pack in a suitcase. And I don’t know if he’s given it up by now (I hope so) but he used to drink 10 Diet Cokes every day. Ten! That is terrible, Tom Bissell! I worry about him.

Maria Bustillos, who is everyone’s pal (I met her last week, she is lovely!), reviews Tom Bissell’s collection of essays, Magic Hours, in the newly launched Los Angeles Review of Books and I could not stop laughing at this part. And also feeling ashamed! Because I too developed a terrible Diet Coke habit in college (at least it wasn’t, you know, coke, coke), and had somehow convinced myself that Diet Coke tasted better — and was healthier — than regular Coke. I spent way too much money on cases of it until I realized that all that artificial sweetener was actually driving me insane. Now I drink seltzer water, which people tell me is bad for my teeth, but it’s better than Diet Coke, so I’m going to continue drinking it. Also, Tom Bissell was once addicted to video games, and once bought four Xbox 360 consoles in three years because he was trying to get himself to stop playing, but couldn’t. It probably didn’t help that he was doing coke, coke, at the time. [via]

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