pollatix! and the pen.

i’m glad there is so much more to life than virtual pollatix. i tax myself! it’s like stamping down a burning vanilla tobacco cigar into your neck. it smells nice for a minute, but soon the melting fat makes your stomach retch and  your whole arm tingle in a really unpleasant way.

in other happenings, i am perhaps getting closer to carving out some breathing space in my schedule. not quite roomy yet, but if i keep at it, i think i can put a job or two away before long. which—you don’t even know—would be like having a “two ton heavy thing” off my back. i just laughed. did you ever hear that song by queensryche? building empire its called. in the beginning is a phone recording by bush I, or dan quayle? don’t remember. he tries to articulate something “hanging over you like a…two ton…heavy thing.”  i think that’s right. funny.

i’m adjusting to this election year on the road politics journalism thing. i’m way too much of a painter or poet type to get it instinctively. i write what is a blog for me about hillary’s appearance and i post it in a few places (thanks M), and it is the morning after her appearance here and it is first hand reporting and so it gets picked up in a few places and i don’t mean to say nobody likes it, seems most feedback was positive, but later i’m fielding return fire and i realize after that you have to nail certain things down because people, some people will always not like what you are saying (especially when you stake out an opinion) and they will come at the weaknesses in the piece, if there are any. and you learn what those are. i got hit with an unsigned comment at one joint, and they were like “this location (the high school where clinton was) seats this many people and the other one (the pit, where obama showed up) five times as many and you wrote that ‘you could fit nine of these rooms into the bigger one” (even though i wrote that it was a rough guess) and getting all judgmental and googlish on me and i realize that i can’t just write emotionally like that… i mean i’m not going to get flavorless. and i am me, and this is not traditional media. but it just helped me think about the particular field and  what makes those types of pieces stronger and what strengths should be brought to it, and such. i can see why new media freaks out traditional J-school types. but i think there is a middle ground. or a nezzle ground. i want to find this new ground, at least where and how i am meeting it, based on my own integrity, how i see the medium. but even in my own view i don’t want to confuse people like that. i didn’t technically mean “seating capacity” x 9. i meant the overall area. one place felt and was and sounded vast! and the other felt smallish. but i was probably being a little too figurative about the space. and people read those political pieces like hard news. so even if they have to adjust to a different style, i do want people to believe me when i say “its nine times as big.” or maybe not. maybe my writing will just become known as being emotional and figurative! i guess i have to decide those things. it was a good experience. really, i just get surprised sometimes by how many eyes can—just like that—be on your piece. i want to keep that in mind is all. i don’t know about you but sometimes when i write i still feel like i’m just writing to myself.

oh, and the mexican newspaper got back in touch with me. they still want me to write that regular column. coolio.