This book of essays by my favorite self-loathing depressive—culled from his work in McSweeney's, the New York Press, the New York Times, Slate.com and others—is hilarious. I've been laughing so hard, even though several of the essays are kind of sad. I think it's so refreshing when depressed, melancholic people write self-deprecatingly about their troubles and self-absorption, which, Lord knows, is what I'm trying to do every day. But Ames really aces the genre, if indeed there is a genre.

Sometimes he and I are remarkably in sync. The following passage about air travel, in particular, really makes me feel we're kindred spirits:

First there's the trauma of getting to the airport, and then there's the overload of feelings I experience as I pass through security. You see, when I go through the metal detectors, I think I should be stopped and arrested; beaten and lashed would also work. I'm not carrying any weapons, but I feel like a bad person. ... I once read a self-help book in the eighties—I don't remember the title, it was something like "All Families Are Sick"—and the author addressed the reader at one point and said: "You think you are bad and deserve to be punished." That's me! Yes somehow I escape punishment at airports. But the life of a fugitive, I find, is exhausting.