Episode 52: How to Pass a Psychological Evaluation

I know a lot of crazy people, but they're not crazy in any sort of medically measurable way. They're more nutty than crazy, I guess. Eccentric, one might say. I mean, I know one person who makes a living singing funny songs about skunks. I know someone who brought along a month's supply of Cipro on vacation to Charleston, South Carolina four years ago during the Democratic National Convention - which was where? NOT CHARLESTON! - because she was certain we were all going to get anthraxed to death that week. I know someone who doesn't like Mark Twain. I know someone who wears her hair in a beehive shape and isn't doing it to be funny; it's just the way she likes it. I know a guy who is obsessed with fish ponds - and I mean obsessed, like he is one step away from putting on a mermaid suit and swimming around in there with his stupid bug-eyed carp. I know someone who drinks Courvoisier and Sprite...together. I know someone who leases his car. Totally nuts, right?

But sometimes I think how it would be really easy for any of them - us, really - to go just that one extra step and look or be certifiably committ-able if a stranger were to size us up. Sometimes I catch people giving me the stinkeye and all I'm doing is like walking down the street wearing one of those giant Vietnamese rice paddy hats (I usually do it without the ox, though), and I just know that they think I'm a menace to society and so they lock up the children when they see me coming. So I'm thinking of not calling people "crazy" any more because I'm worried it'll bounce back and stick to me. But I can't come up with what the new word I call them will be. "Retarded" is definitely out, because the word police say so. I'm going to have to put my thinking cap on and come up with one. My pointed, Vietnamese rice-paddy thinking cap...



BY THE WAY. Did you all know that some dumb company called Google has stolen my idea? Mmmm hmmmm, they have How-Tos every day on the little iGoogle home page! Two of them every day that link to WikiHow, whatever the fuck that is! And maybe they did it before I started this. BUT! I go every day to see what they're doing and then I make sure I don't do that. But today was close, because I have a How to Stop Being Jealous in the pipeline and they already did it (WITH A QUOTATION FROM THE BIBLE!) and now I'm in a quandary because it'll look like I'm copying. In a quandary, I say!