• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, January 11, 2008

Loyal readers will be relieved to learn that in spite of the writers' strike, I have returned to work (but without my full-time staff, I will probably continue to get emails from recruiter-maximus Mark Dacey asking when I will be "funny" again). It was a difficult decision for me to cross my own picket line, since I had been marching with signage outside my home office since the strike began before Christmas. (Now, you see there, the regular writers, who are far more PC than I am, would have said: "Don't write 'Christmas,' write 'holiday'"!). But, the fact is, I ran out of insulting slogans that rhyme with "Simpson" and felt bad asking myself if I could cross the picket line to use the bathroom a couple of times day.

This is not to suggest there hasn't been considerable acrimony between me, myself and I. Me has worked without a contract for god knows how many years and has always been suspect of I's true intentions. All of that talk that we are a "family" just didn't ring true--except when I treated me like the retarded cousin nobody talks about (or gives digital residuals to). In fact, during the early days of the strike, I keyed the side of my car to vent a little anger and send a message to myself. Well, needless to say, it didn't take me long to figure out I had done it, and charges were pressed. An arrest was quickly made, and me was sent to 30 days in the hole.

It was a terrifying experience. What could be worse than becoming your own bitch? When I entered the showers I was petrified, even though I was alone. Sure enough, I dropped the soap, and the next thing I knew--well, you hardcore Over the Line readers know what comes next. If that wasn't troubling enough, a guard heard the commotion, yelled "what's going on in there?" then beat the living hell out of me when I replied, "Nothing, I'm just ****ing myself!"

If you have the requisite number of friends on Wall Street, you can stockpile enough sexist, racist, anti-Semitic jokes, putdowns and stories the color of Hawaiian sunsets to take you through the early stages of a writers' strike, but one day someone asks you "How many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb?" and .... you have no response. You get an email that starts out: "Three old Jews were chatting at the old folk's home..." and you can't recall the punch line. Worse still, you can't even remember why they call them "The Aristocrats." Suddenly you are without unaided humor. It's like that childhood dream where everyone can see you naked.

While being humorless almost immediately qualifies you for a whole new career in say, magazine publishing or email marketing, it is an aberration--a condition at odds with the natural order of the universe. Without resolution, you are Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, my friend. The only reasonable course of action is to make up with yourself. For years, your shrinks have told you to forgive yourself--and well, you never did, huh?

Now is your chance. Get back in front of that mirror and say, "I am funny, and people like me." That probably neither is true matters not. Your mission is to reconcile with the writer within, so that he or she returns promptly and humorously.

I did it. Just ask Mark.

The story you have just read is an attempt to blend fact and fiction in a manner that provokes thought, and on a good day, merriment. It would be ill-advised to take any of it literally. Take it, rather, with the same humor with which it is intended. Cut and paste or link to it at your own peril.