I don't have time to write this like I want to, but I'll give it a shot anyway:

When I complain about something, I generally try to do it in a way that transforms any actual anger I have about it into L-A-U-G-H-S.

I'm not saying I succeed very often. But my intent is to turn misery into funny.

If you think about it, it's not actually very funny if you start bleeding all over yourself in the middle of a crowded public place. But it's pretty funny if it happens to someone else, or so all the girls in high school who hissed, "NURSE!" at the poor unfortunates who suffered this indignity seemed to think.

Almost anything awful is kind of funny, provided it only happens to someone else. I figure, why shouldn't I be my own someone else? I'm not an extrovert, you know. I don't have a band of people to pal around with. There's me, there's my boyfriend, there's my family, there's the marvelous people I email, and . . . uh . . . mmm . . . well, I've exchanged pleasantries with one of the girls in my Spanish class once or twice, and . . . well, that's it.

I ENJOY mocking myself. I'm a rich repository of malicious, mean-spirited humor for myself. And no, I don't take it seriously. I don't really think I'm as dumb as I sometimes make myself out to be. I don't really think I'm as clumsy, or as fat, or as neurotic--if you want to know the truth, I think I'm pretty all right. If anything, I tend towards the vain and the proud. Self-effacement is simply one way I try to head those sins off at the pass.

If it sometimes gives other people a laugh to read about it, that's just so much velvet.

Not everyone agrees with me about what's funny. That's fine. I usually don't agree with them about what's funny either. Insert cliche about horse-racing or the world going 'round here.

But you know what I don't do? I don't automatically assume that if, for example, you think Scrappleface is laugh-out-loud hilarious, you must be all kinds of messed up as a person. I assume, I think correctly, that you and I don't agree on what's funny in this particular instance.

I don't make assumptions like this:

I couldn't help but feel sorry for that poor embittered woman. Such a sad life she must have if she is consumed with such hatred.

--and I especially don't make them based on one post about TAMPONS. For pity's sake! Okay, I confess to having harbored perhaps a touch of hatred for whoever designed those crummy tampons, but you know what? It's out of my system now, because I turned it into something that cracked myself up.

See? I wasn't kidding about the vanity. I read, and re-read, my own posts, and I break myself up with them. That might be vain, but it's not embittered.

I have a pretty good life. Many days I'd even say I have an excellent life. The days I don't have such a great life, they work out in the end anyhow, because misery means one thing to me: Misery means MATERIAL.

I like providing material. I get a kick out of it. I'm tickled pink if you sometimes get a kick out of it too, but if you don't? Spare me your analysis, because it comes off as being just a little bit . . .

. . . bitter.