Time for a more serious, informative blog entry--words people say generally do not accurately describe this site. Don't worry, though, this entry still contains a rant against people.

As I write this, I am feeling the pleasant effects of percasets and massive ibuprofen pills, for I sprained my foot last night. The doctors are relatively sure it's not broken, but I have to get more x-rays Monday. In any case, I did not sprain it while skipping down a street piss-drunk to go swimming in a creek at 4 a.m., as one of my former Medill peers did (See the link to "Dickie" above). Rather, a 250-pound man crushed it at rugby practice last night. Since my schedule moved from the night shift from Tuesday through Saturday to more normal hours from Sunday through Thursday, I've been able to play the sport again with a team from Annapolis. We have a great team and I rather enjoy the sport; except that is, when I'm being crippled by men who outweigh me by 60 pounds.

(Rant against people) I went to the pharmacy at Giant to pick up some pain-killers and found out I had about a 20-minute wait before they'd be ready. As such, I limped around the store on crutches to pick up some goods to make dinner tonight. I cannot believe how much people suck--and I'm not talking about "young punks," I'm talking about middle-aged people and retirees. If I were to see someone on crutches coming down the aisle, and within 5 limps of successfully leaving it, I would smile, step aside, and let said gimp gracefully make the turn. Not so, however, for some 50-ish lady with upper-middle-class written all over her. She insisted on coming down the aisle, running her cart into the shelves on the left and giving me basically no choice but to wait for her to get by before I could continue my "walk." Now, as I noted, I'm usually a gentleman when the situation calls for it, but in this instance, I really felt like dropping the C-bomb and clubbing the shit out of her face with one of my crutches. Alas, out of fear that the local law-enforcement agencies might frown upon such a display, I elected not to.

I wish I could say that this lady was the only one who acted so boorishly, but that would be far from the truth. People in their 60s, who probably held up traffic on their drive to the store, were apparently in some big hurry to get around the man on crutches, to the point where I again had to stop several times to let them get by. Well, j'espere que ces sacs de merdes vont tous se faire foutre (pardon my French). Seriously, what ever happened to a little fucking decency?

Anyway, back to my job, which I was saying is going well. Some things I cover are more interesting than others, but there are a lot of really cool stories and interesting people around that I enjoy writing about--RIGHT HERE on Maryland's Eastern Shore (hey-oooo!!!!). Sorry about that self-serving shout-out.

Now if I didn't know better, I would be alarmed with myself, as in the past few weeks the paper received a letter from Karl Rove congratulating us for my coverage of a Bush visit, and I received a signed picture of myself with Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. (Steele basically hi-jacked me as we were talking, placing a vulcan death-grip on me as one of photographers snapped the pick. That said, he came across as a pretty decent guy). I also was told "I should be proud of myself" by a candidate I profiled who is Old Testament-like conservative. My personal politics are diametrically opposed to those of all these people. But I wasn't being thanked for pushing their agenda (don't worry, I didn't), I was just being thanked for reporting what actually happened in a genuinely "fair and balanced manner." With so much distrust of the media these days, I wish more organizations, particularly of the TV variety, would put aside their personal politics and report the facts.

Straight facts, for instance, like ExxonValdez giving their retiring CEO Lee R. Raymond a $400 million parting gift during the same year it took in a U.S. record $36.1 billion in profits and only invested $10 million to research environmentally-sound technology. BP, on the other hand, has already voluntarily reduced their carbon-dioxide emissions by 10 percent (as the U.S. as a whole would have done if it signed the Kyoto Accord), at no profit loss, and is investing $800 million a year to develop alternative forms of clean energy (hey, tomorrow's Earth Day). Draw your own conclusions; I've done my job.

I'm not saying I'm great (others are, though), I'm just saying one of the things I find frustrating in my line of work is the distrust I sometimes face for the work of my peers. Ironically, despite all its shortcomings, I think the media is actually much better today than it has generally been in the past, although people are now more wary of us. That will all change when I'm the CEO of a company that routinely buys other media outlets and lays good people off to meet some bottom line to satisfy investors. Ah, but I digress.

Anyhow, the point is, life is good, and will be better once I'm off crutches, hopefully within a few days.