Shut up or I'm going to slap you… James Lileks is having a hysterical, bug-eyed, run-back-and-forth-across-the-room, will-someone-please-slap-him fit because his wife, who longtime readers will recall is half responsible for all that tedious babbling about his daughter, has just gotten fired.  I'm sure it's a catastrophe, and completely unfair, and Lileks will be almost as stoic about this as the time he didn't find the printer he wanted at CompUSA.

Is this behavior a sign of a testosterone deficiency?  Or is comporting himself like Lucille Ball on an assembly line supposed to be a comedy extra?  (A comedy extra is an incidental pratfall or mishap which heightens the mood, such as Chris Rock shouting "nigger" or Jackie Mason getting castrated.)  Something else, perhaps.

It isn't unheard of to deal with a minor setback by simply getting on with it rather than loudly clearing your throat and pointing to yourself until someone asks what's wrong.  What's particularly odd is that Lileks is one of those people fond of pointing to history (or at least its packaging) and wondering aloud where that simple and decent and earnest world went, when he's one of the reasons why there is less of it.

My God, people can be vile. I hate to realize sometimes how naive I can be, how I can still be surprised at someone’s ability to put the screws to their fellow man - er, person - for reasons so petty you couldn’t find them with an electron microscope. One silly minor person sets her jaw, decides to show someone what’s what, and the effect cascades through the lives of half a dozen other people.

I am writer, hear me whine.  As soon as I followed the link to yesterday's introductory snivel, I knew he was on the cusp of an epic – it was just a matter of the build-up.  And people think Ivan Denisovich had it tough – at least he didn't have to fire his nanny.  Stop humoring him.