Blahhhging potpourri

No. 1: Someone tagged my building last night. I am ambivalent about taggers; less so about property owners who don't clean off or paint over the shit pronto. Tags that live to see the light of many days seem to beget more tags.

I know it's a pain in the ass to paint over and that it would be better if the taggers stuck to railway cars, but consistently removing the graffiti is the only way to deal with the stuff that shows up. Recently, an old gallery across the street got tagged, and the owner has not cleaned it up. Whether that actually resulted in my building being tagged last night or not is anyone's guess.

But what I noticed tonight is an unusual approach to the graffiti on my building. Someone has created a large, hand-written sign and posted it immediately beneath the grafitti. The sign tells the taggers to "stand behind" their art if they "believe it has meaning." It suggests the possibility, to me, that the taggers are being invited to participate in a gallery showing. There is a name and a phone number.

I have half a mind to call it and ask what's up.

No. 2: I've worked a long swing shift yesterday, followed by a morning shift today at two different H4TCIs. One home had a narcisist who was pissed off and "shared" his feelings with me at length. The second had a woman who is still sucking on an oxygen tank two weeks after coming down with a brutal chest virus and one week after finally seeing the doctor for it. I had to check her on the hour, every hour, to make sure she was still breathing.

You might want to steer clear of me for a few days. I very well could be like that TB guy who hopped all those fllights. I could be carrying serious germs. But I am feeling pretty good right now, so I'll try to hold onto that feeling and ward off any ailments. I don't have the time to get sick.

No. 3: I made roasted potatoes a new way tonight, and I have to give this one the thumbs up. Used red potatoes, a lemon, couple cloves of garlic, some flat-leaf parsley, olive oil, salt & pepper. Roasted that, turning regularly, at 425 for about an hour, until the sliced lemon was getting carmelized. Threw on some olives and a little parmesean cheese and baked another five minutes.

YUMMY. Especially wonderful kick from the lemon, the carmelized rind of which is delicious.

No. 4: Merciful me, The Clairvoyant has bailed me out for later this week. She found a slot in this already-cranned week between a trip to Moab last week and London next to get me in for a massage. May the universe bless her.

My body has so much tension in it sometimes, seems like my hair ought to play musical notes. Seems like my fingertips, as with Daphne's leafy fingers in that stunning Bernini sculpture, ought to ring like crystals each time they tap this keyboard. (Oh, could you imagine if they really did?!) ... Anyway, there is that much tension in this body at times that only metaphor will do in describing it.

I took my balance ball to work with me yesterday -- there are many strange perks to my job; being able to study while stretching on a balance ball is one of them. I've also been doing some peaceful yoga, as well as listening to TC's hypnosis CD designed to stop me from clenching my jaw. But I'm wound tight as a slingshot.

Not good.

But perhaps on Thursday, I will experience some relief.

No.5: I added to my tension tonight by watching a little too much of a "Frontline" piece on the war the Bush Administration is conducting on journalism, particularly with regards to persistant threats of using the Espionage Act against the journalists who publish classified information leaked by government officials and employees. The specific target is The New York Times. That shit made me pissed off just listening to it. Wound me up all that much tighter.

Had to stop paying attention to it because the Times often seems like the last respectable major media outlet -- the "newspaper of record" for the entire country -- that still reports aggressively about the federal government and the so-called War on Terror (aka, the War on Civil Liberties). The Times is also the same newspaper that published the questionable work of Judith Miller, who was quite the tool for Bush's march to war, using "sources" who leaked LIES disguised as classified information. So it's not like the Bush Administration hasn't seen tremendous benefits from that particular approach.

Anyway, it disgusts me.

I dedicated five years of undergraduate study and 10 years of work in the profession of journalism, and I can barely stomach what it's become, particularly since Sept. 11. Yuck, man.

There's no telling where this world is heading. And if the Bush Administration and other similarly minded politicians in the future have their way, there will be no real reporting on where this world is heading, either.

The apocalypse is going to catch us all by surprise some day.

And on that uplifting note...

...No. 6:Long day, not enough sleep. Logging off and heading to Dream Land.