Yup, it is to laugh. It is hard to be truly miserable over my problems du jour, because quite simply they are too fucking funny.

Today, on a gorgeous Saturday, the day before July 4, I drove over to the psychologist’s and took a little personality inventory. I’m guessing I scored, hmmm, how do I put this? Yeah, right, NORMAL. I didn’t answer true to the shit about hallucinating and wearing tinfoil hats and talking with the animals while envisioning Our Blessed Mother, and I didn’t answer false to the tricky ones, like “I never right stuff in my ‘blog that may be misunderstood.” Of course, though, there were some ones where I will sound borderline paranoid (actually downright paranoid). “Do you think someone is out to get you?” Why YES, yes I do, else why would I be in this office? And, “Do you think people are talking about you?” NO, not at all, it’s a mere coincidence that 30 individual work-related computers have looked around dee-rob.com. Probably just all felt like reading some wonderful prose all at the same time, independently fired up their work computers and came here. Couldn’t be ’cause folks is talking about little old me.

After getting my head shrunk, which took the form of a perfectly lovely conversation with a nice, considerate man, I headed to the beach. Good god is Crane’s beach beautiful. I walked the trails, listened to the continually random iPod, rested in the sun and dove into some frigid Atlantic waters, which were as smooth as the whetted edge of a balanced cleaver. Saw some plovers that nest there and footprints of wildlife in the sand.

Perhaps when all is said and done, I’ll write a thank you note to the seriously humor-impaired person or persons who claim I am at risk of workplace violence. Afterall, a little free time in the midst of summer sure helps you to remember what’s important on this little party planet. Hell, like the psychologist said, I have a great support network. Who needs a job, when they are in touch with what’s vital to survive?

…if you’re thinking about integrating life’s pieces and being all cool and hip and mentally healthy, do not ever forget the affection and/or sense of humor of a guy who in the middle of too much attention being paid sends you a sign (literally) goofing on whether it is all about you….

So, you spend your morning speaking with a psychologist, and there is going to be thought given to integration versus separation. In other words, split personalities, i.e. Sybil, bad, normal functioning with a broad spectrum of understanding and emotion good. I’ve been thinking of that concept of integrating your behavior and the facets of your life.

All’s good when family and friends get the joke or whatever, and you aren’t left explaining a separate world. It’s even better when you fuck around and stumble across the like-minded folks where meaning is telegraphed and they’re integrating shit left and right and life is moving forward. Imagine, people with notebooks and cameras and stupid ideas and open conversation, like yourself. These people trust you, because they have no reason not to, and for the same reason, you can trust them.

Maybe it boils down to the conersation I had with another comedian last weekend. She made two observations that stick with me through the other bullshit and the literal strife of work. (1) Is that hanging out with comedians is always interesting (who else would connect a ceiling fan and pretzel rods into a fun target/mouth catching game) and (2) the writers among groups have different sensibilities. Her example, seeing the movie Napoleon Dynamite, hated by the “civilians” in her group and imitated by the writers.

And, so it goes that I will keep writing, “and so it goes.”

Could be I’m just giddy with hanging out late, knowing that I don’t have to be with any serious world tomorrow.

Some time every woman of a certain age needs to make a choice and submit. So, this morning I went to the first of possibly a series or pair of psych evaluations. Dutiful, quiet and submissive, that’s what I’m all about.

I had tried to avoid submitting to the evaluation. Not because I don’t care about the work situation, and certainly not because I thought that there could be any basis of finding me prone to violence. Instead, I have just found it morally repugnant. Perhaps “morally” is not the right word, since my feelings are very tied into the whole American thang we got going on here. The rights to speech, innocence before guilt is proven and facing your accusers are not universally held as moral and true and right in a universal sense, but they are my birthright, my culture and my morality, and so it goes. I was appalled, I am appalled that my writing here would come to a place where my brain is fair game for analysis, my own words held against me for an inherent intangible such as mental fitness. So many questions are raised by “mental fitness” — by who, for whom, for what, when, and who defines all of the terms?

Misgivings aside, I went. I went for my own sake by my own choice, because the only thing I can have any control or sway over is my own behavior. Therefore, I concluded that since I am not psychotic, a danger or anything other than a writer, it is best to work proactively to exhonerate myself.

Since I could not find a place of compromise to another solution (and god and my lawyer know I tried), I will do everything happily and cooperatively to clear my name and clarify that my writing and performance are not evidence of anything other than an active and intelligient mind.

Part 2 will be an actual personality assessment type of test, and Part 1 I believe went well. (Of course, how could it not, since I am a responsible, reflective, intelligient member of society.) At the end of the day, I may in fact (and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least) get myself fired over an enormous misunderstanding, since, of course, if the workplace don’t wanna groove on what I’m doing, they don’t gotta. No one ever said they have to like me, like what I have written or pay me for anything at all. (Their side of the free society is to not let me back in the door, and, hey, I have to respect their view, if that’s how it plays. I can piss and moan all I like about the good work I have done for them and my rights, but no one promised me a rose garden.)

But, my behavior is controlled by me, and I am choosing actively and with a whole lot of reflection to submit to their evaluations and examinations. Then, when all is said and done, the dust has been settled I can know myself to have done the right thing, to have considered the import of my actions and to have done what was necessary to clear my name. Ultimately, I plan to sleep well knowing (1) that to have written here is not in and of itself a hostile act and (2) I am not the person they are claiming me to be.

Meanwhile, through out the whole interview, the guy was reminding me of Mr. Rogers because of the careful measure and deliberateness of his words. That doesn’t make me crazy, now does it?

I have been so hung up on the capital ‘B’ Bullshit that’s been falling all around me, I forgot to make with the jokes…

So, I’m into technology, and I think Bush has got to go. What does a tech savvy chick do in 2004 to sway voters? Here’s my idea — webcams. I seduce people in chat rooms to cam with me. After showing them my tits, BAM, I hit ’em with my rhetoric — NO MORE in ’04. Better than Dean’s Blog for America, I’ll cam to defeat Bush. Doing my part for democracy one horny geek at a time.

OK, needs a punchline, but I think it combines my three favorite things: Sex, Politics and horrifying people with the outrageous.

ROCK ON, and remember kids, Cam if you love Jesus.

I was just thinking in the shower (because in this rocking life, I don’t need to shower afore noon).

Firstly, you’ll need this:

Secondly, this post may be the first REAL post here ever. Everything has been honest, but very little has been absolutely real (I will explain that below, grab the NoDoz…)

Here’s the thing, there is a part of me that feels like a huge fucking failure. I want to clean up loose ends at work. I want to be remembered for all of the hard work I did not for this misunderstanding. And, it is indeed a misunderstanding, not a relevant sign post in my impending psychosis. I am sure that several people feel that I have let them down. Perhaps I would too if the roles were reversed.

I think they see me as reckless, but I am not and have never really been reckless. In the drug years of youth, I always did far, far fewer than any of my peers. I picked and chose moments and never ingested anything unknowingly without caution. In the sex years of that same freefall of youth (OK, that’s not a past tense kind of thing, although damn if I ain’t getting any right now, shit), I mostly have exercised a little judgement there too, and acted mostly safely. To this day, I’ve never done anything universally freaky or fetishy; no costumes, no ball gags, no crowds, no pain, no tampering with orifices ideally left to their own natural state. (I have an ongoing argument with a friend on vanilla vs. freak. I swear I’m vanilla, he points out the context of the true vanilla. But, still and all, I have simple tastes.) And, financially, apart from a blip also fed by callow youth, I have lived largely debt free. I paid off student loans literally as soon as they possibly could be, saved a bit and bought a house when I was 31 or 32. After college, I’ve held jobs and done the “right” things, making career choices and developing skills. Stable and focused.

I mention all of this, because here’s the thing — I like to seem reckless. The ideas in my head, my politics, my beliefs, my “vision,” the shit I think is cool all lean toward radical. I don’t think the revolution needs to involve sado-masochistic destruction, however. You do need to rattle some cages and shake shit up to get new ideas moving. I just don’t think personally that you have to starve or explode to make changes or to ONLY, if only, just to START A GODDAMN DIALOGUE. Comedy is reckless, because you are saying shit out loud for effect that other people don’t think of or don’t want to say or whatever, but still want to hear. Writing is reckless for the same reasons. By the way, performing nude brings all of that shit over the top and beyond.)

But the recklessness of comedy and writing isn’t actually reckless. There’s no destruction or doom lingering, no total anarchy without caring. For fuck’s sake, if anything it’s a pussy way to revolt and not lose your benefits. Thinking is just a good idea, it’s not radical at all.

I thought that it was pretty widely apparent that writing and thinking and ironically, intellectually masturbating in a public forum was and is not REAL. Weblogging by it’s on the fly nature, by being temporal, by grabbing disparate links and ideas, amalgating little doodads and factoids can’t be REALLY REAL. The Internet is a virtual world. I am a virtual character made flesh (I hope) by my words, but the person typing this text has other real world, tangible characteristics, reponsibilities and context missing from this page. AND, by the very nature of writing versus living, those things will always fucking be missing from this page.

However, if I write properly and effectively my emotions are honest and my thoughts genuine. The frustrations I have described in regard to work are true, but they are not real. Emotions are not tangible things. They also are usually fleeting. Describing anger and frustration (and fucking humor) in prose does not equal action in the real world. Apart from Ernest Hemingway sucking on a rifle barrel most people and/or so-called artists aren’t looking to wallow in the pure idea-based, descriptive, emotional plane. I mean think about it, how much would life actually suck if every time you had a thought or an emotion you just snapped and acted right on it. Guess there’d be a lot fewer jobs and spouses and a lot of Hemingway-type messes to mop up alongside a whole lot of freaky naked sex in the streets.

I value honest expression, but I don’t confuse it with reality. If only someone else were smart enough to figure that out, we all wouldn’t be listening to me wax all philosophical right now.

There is I hope truth in everything I write or perform, even just a kernel, but it fucking ain’t real.