In recent days, I joked around with andrastewhite about how the Jossverse teaches people how not to deal with depression. She's going to post the list of Buffy-derived lessons on depression while I wrote the Angel list.

So: All I know about how not to deal with depression, I learned from Angel: The Series :

If I am depressed...

- I will not hit on attractive blonde women in an alley

- I will not go anywhere near my father

- or my mother figure, especially if she also used to be my lover

- I will not lock a bunch of lawyers in a room so they can be eaten

- I will not fire my employees and play lone avenger

- I will not ignore voicemail messages in favour of having sex

- though having sex with the woman I'm obsessed about might cure me of the depression, so I can throw her out and return to my friends

- I will not make a pact with a time-travelling demon

- I will not try to decypher prophecies on my own

- I will talk with my co-workers about terrible prophecies, instead of talking with my friend's arch-nemesis

- I might even consider talking to my friend about said terrible prophecies

- I will not try black magic; that never ends well

- I will not start a hot and dysfunctional relationship with a woman whose job it is to make the world a worse place

- I will not keep a slavegirl in a closet

- I will not have sex with my almost-boyfriend's son

- I will not kick my son out of my home just when he's finally ready to talk to me, even if he has had sex with my almost-girlfriend

- I will not believe prostitutes offer sex for free; this spares me humilation

- I will not obsess about my girlfriend and my former friend

- I will not get the bright idea of bringing back the evil psychotic version of my fearless leader

- I will not try to commit suicide by blowing myself and a lot of other people up

- I will not let my sleep be taken away and start talking with my mirror

- I will also not sleep overly long without asking someone trustworthy to monitor me

- I will not ask my father figure for a purpose unless I have a death wish

- I will not shoot employees in the kneecaps, or knife my co-worker

- though I will bond with a blue goddess who looks like the woman I loved, because otherwise I would be even more unstable

- I will not let my fearless leader talk me into assassinating people for him

- I will ask that my private airplane be supplied with larger bottles,so I can get genuinenly drunk.