Idiosycratic Life

This update on my Idiosyncratic Life is brought to you by the Voice of Doom, with additional funding provided by the "Why the Hell is this World so F*cked Up Such that So Many Bad Things Happen to Good People?" Foundation, in accordance with the Why God Why Institute.

As you can probably tell, I am not about to serve up a particularly happy entry. Sigh....

Manda's college roommate is not doing well, as in, "She has pneumonia; she could be rejecting her lungs; she needs a miracle, please."

The incumbent senator of Minnesota was killed in a plane crash directly in the coverage area of the newspaper that is most likely to hire me, just as soon as they get the flight plans to fly me out there coordinated, which will not happen now for a Very Long Time as they are going to be uber-busy covering spot news, going to state funerals, finding photos of the crew who also died, which means contacting families to submit recent photos and being all sad because they're doing awful news around the clock. Which not only means no financial independence or health coverage for me any time soon, but also- and this is really what's tragic- a really good person and his family died, AND we're pretty much only have about 11 shopping days left until we have a Republican congress, unchecked military spending and an unjust war which will throw us all into a spiralling recession. Great.

Also, two of the most loving, welcoming and inspiring people of the Lockerbie Project we've all been working on since 1999 died in a terrible car crash in the beginning of this week. The plan to even begin this project was inspired by the daughter in the family who is my age, as she talked so warmly about her hometown as a lively place of hope for her family. I spoke to her best friend this morning as I was ordering flowers from our London photo class, (she works in the flowershop) who says that Alison is holding up unbelievably well, her brother not so much, but that their extended family has been hugely helpful, and she and her brother are going away to the Lake District for the weekend to be together and collect their thoughts. I declare a moritorium on all sadness for the people of Dumfreisshire, Scotland. No one in that entire county is allowed to experience any more traedy. No more diseases plaguing the cattle, no more acts of terrorism, no more car crashes or fires or problems of any kind, please. They've had their quota, in my opinion, and I wish I weren't so helpless to stop it all.

Things for me are fine, really. I'm Stupid Busy. Lots of people at the Hiami Merald are on vacation or out sick so I've been working like a madwoman, sometimes double shifts, which is good, I guess, but I also did a wedding type thing last weekend, and tomorrow I'm covering an event for an organization that asked if I was free, and I said yes, which is true, but I gave them an exorbitant price so I wouldn't have to do it, but they agreed to pay it, so now I really have to work as I told them I was free and I shouldn't pass up this money, but I've had only 2 1/2 days off total in the last three weeks, and I'm soooo tired. I want to run with my dog on the beach and sleep late and finish these art portolfios for a gallery submission and .... (yawn).....work on the CD-ROM template I'm undertaking and.... and..... (zzzzzzzzzzz)

WHA- What happened? Okay, I'm awake. Rah.

Can you tell I'm in a bad mood? I'm in a bad mood. All these reporters with their wrong directions and incomplete photo requests and impossible demands (Can you photoshop these photos of this new cell phone with this LCD screen? Oh, did you shoot that really complicated, hard to light, last minute, pain in the @ss, forgot to put in a photo request, need it five minutes ago thing yet? Because I forgot to give you this importnat accessory that needs to be in the shot. Oh, and can you hurry? Thanks.) I shouldn't be whining about this when other people I Iove are dealing with much, much more painful things, and there's nothing I can do about it.

That's really what I'm upset about anyway.