And while we're being juvenile, I feel a bit depressed that nobody comments on this blog except my mother. She's my mother, she's supposed to love me. Sigh. It's like when you're, like, telling a joke, and you start, like, laughing -- and then nobody else laughs, so then you're like, "HA, ha -- ha-ha...ha...." This is one of the recurrent themes of my life. I think I'm frickin' funny, but that doesn't always translate into other people laughing. It's like Bruno Kirby in Good Morning Vietnam saying to the General after being fired from Robin Williams's old job: "In my heart I know I'm funny." Lieutenant Steve, Lieutenant Steve, of course you are (squeekie, squeekie).

It's very, very rarely that I can get out of that mode where I want to be Something Hugely Important. What usually jerks me out of my Childe Harold-and-Childe-Roland self is when I throw such a tantrum that I hear God start snickering. He's probably snickering more often than I hear, but I'm usually all Prufrocky and don't take the hint until I throw a big fit, and then even I have to laugh. Don't you think it's funny that the great literature of the last two centuries is mostly a celebration of this feeling that I'd rather not have? It's like a story my roommate told me about a little girl who stamped her foot at her folks and said, "I'm cereal!" and was enraged when they laughed all the more. I imagine God reading all our angsty postmodern books with a finger over His grin.

Speaking of angsty postmodern books, I need to be working on mine. But not during the West Wing premiere tonight!