IT'S A GREAT LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN, OR EVEN IF YOU DO. Sometimes I get tired of my own anger, and wonder if it isn't a bad thing to keep up this blog. Every time I see an outrage (well, not every time, teeny-boppers -- I'd be on here 24-7, or whenever the public library was open, parked at a public terminal, surrounded by my shopping bags, wearing four coats and twelve days' growth of beard, and radiating a strong fungal musk) I open Blogger and vomit out a response; but like Harry Hope's liquor after Hickey has reformed, it don't have no kick no more, and I come away still seething.

Sometimes I think I need an alternative action plan -- anger management classes, Paxil, or some more lasting form of self-expression. Anything's gotta beat serving as the Bizarro-world equivalent of those poor fellows who regularly rise to denounce Che t-shirts or Mao in the library as if the kids' eyes hadn't been glazed like Krispy Kreme since word one and the janitor weren't already putting up the chairs.

So I did like the social worker suggested and made a list, and the upshot is I will keep it up a little longer anyway, as the reasons in favor are still compelling:

• Another year and I qualify for the blogger vesting program.
• When I finally get Peggy Noonan alone in a corner of some think-tank dinner and make her listen to my crappy proto-electronica, I can truthfully say, in a wheezing voice, "I wrote you letters, many letters, why haven't you answered my letters?"
• I'm right and they're wrong.

UPDATE. One of the tasks I set for myself as a young man was to stop fishing for compliments. It may be that, under the guise of thinking out loud, I dropped the flag with this post -- the only mystery greater than other people, after all, is oneself. I'm very grateful nonetheless for all the kind and (as usual) eloquent words in comments, even if you are all FBI agents, as the three-foot-tall green man in the corner insists. I expect to keep this popsicle stand open for a while yet.