(I post more on hiatus than when I'm supposed to be blogging, no?)

Gary Farber is in all kinds of trouble. I'm going to do a little to help him out, and ask you, O my tens of readers, to consider doing likewise, because:

1. He asked. Ceteris paribus, what else does one need?

2. He doesn't seem to have anyone else.

The thing here is, one of Gary's problems is intensely personal to me: I, too, have major depressive disorder. There -- in Gary's shoes -- but for the grace of a god I don't believe in, go I. I was lucky: all along, I had family and friends, and now especially I have my wife. These people stood in for me and stood up for me and picked me up and pushed me along, and I'd be dead without their selfless assistance. Really truly not-pining-for-the-fjords dead, and it really is just sheer dumb luck that I had these people in my life; I could just as easily have wound up on my own, and I wouldn't have made it -- or if I did, out of sheer orneriness, it wouldn't have been any kind of a life. So it's very easy for me to imagine myself in Gary's shoes.

I can never repay my debt to those who kept me out of the pit, but I can "pay it forward" -- right now, that means sending Gary a little spare cash. And asking you to consider doing the same.

(Title shamelessly stolen from Cosma. You should steal it from me, if you have a blog.)