Okay okay okay ... let's pull back the shades, let in a little light, watch the critters scurry for the shadows, blow the dust and crumbs off the coffee table, brush aside the junk mail debris, turn off the TV with the snowy picture since the cable bill hasn't been paid in months, step over the empty ice cream cartons and pizza boxes and pieces of food stuck into the carpet, and pretend the stuff growing on dirty dishes in the sink doesn't exist.

Let's get this blog rollin again!

Yes it's still breathing. I took a mid-November vacation and, while work has resumed, that vacation just never ended as far as the blog was concerned. It's a downward spiral: The longer you delay a post, the more daunting the task to catch up.

Anyways, I'm at work so let's start simple. First, I bet I'm the first reporter to use the words "baseball great Steve Garvey" and "North Korea" in a lead. (Which was subsequently butchered. The lead, not Steve Garvey.)

And you know you're having a surreal day when you find yourself saying "Seriously though, Steve Garvey, enough about North Korea - Let's talk J.D. Drew."

Second, with the Venezuela elections coming up it turns out I'm still on the EU observer delegation's email list, and their messages to my gmail elicit small pangs of nostalgia. Well ... I don't know if "nostalgia"'s the word. This article on Caracas, posted on Slate yesterday, pretty much hits the nail on the head.

"Lost in the media coverage of Venezuelan oil and Hugo Chávez's colorful antics is the fact that over the last decade, Caracas has become a very dangerous place to live. Colombia might have the history, and Brazil might make splashier headlines, but Venezuela has quietly eclipsed both its neighbors in levels of violent street crime."

Also, compare the description I gave of the city in September 2005 to Feinman's account of the lightbulbs. First, Cronkite:

"The mountains are dotted with the lights of the ranchos, or what they call in Brazil 'favelas,' or what they call in Africaaner 'shantytowns,' or what they call in the United States 'dumps.'

At night, when you can't actually, you know, "see" the ranchos - only the scattered dots of light along the cerros (hills) - it's a pretty sight in its own way. But I wouldn't tell that to someone who actually has to live there."

And now, Feinman

"Ironically, the city's poorest neighborhoods make for a hauntingly beautiful sight when seen from a distance. ... Many of the homes in the Caracas barrios have a single light bulb hanging over their front door. When seen from a distance, the sea of barrio lights appears to waver and twinkle. It is a staggeringly beautiful effect made possible by the gasses rising from the open refuse and sewage, a product of a dense concentration of people and poverty."

...I guess I'm special, just like everyone else.