perceptions

I found out about my work situation: the station has been bought by the owner of a prominent local baseball franchise.

Baseball in L.A.? you might be asking yourself.

Yes. We are not owned by the franchise itself-- we are owned by the man who owns the franchise. It's a limited partnership. I will leave it at that.

So we've all been rehired, and that means I have a job for now. Who knows how the next quarter will go? Maybe I'll be out of here in three months. Maybe I'll get a call-back from the other gig I was trying to land.

At least the pressure is off. I have been playing it safe, showing up to work on time and dressing nicer. I still do nothing all day, but I make it look like I'm busy, and everyone knows the true secret to making it in the business world is to appear busy at all times.

I don't have a problem appearing busy-- even when I'm relaxing, my mind is racing a mile a second, trying to figure out what needs to get done next.


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Last night we sat around and talked and watched DVDs as usual, and it doesn't get boring, it doesn't get repetitive, it doesn't lose its appeal... I don't think I could ever fully express the dimensions and size of this thing we have between us. It defies the laws of physics and occupies an area of invisible matter that refuses to be transformed or broken down into smaller compounds.

It cannot be dissected without destroying the vital tissues that hold everything together. It cannot be scanned or given an X-ray-- it is impenetrable and impervious to inspection, hermetically sealed, perfectly formed, completely inexplicable...

She and I are mere vehicles transporting the mass of this undetectable bond, possibly bearing the burden on our backs. We soldier on and march side-by-side, cracking jokes and singing songs and stopping to enjoy long meals and relaxing sojourns in various sanctuaries.

We drink spirits and invoke the gods of smoke. We scribble out cave-wall sketches with pastel charcoals while lying in bed. We drive through this beautiful city on sun-soaked days where the panoramic vistas steal away our breath like benevolent asthma attacks.

We spend our days living in successive moments, marveling at the artists who have learned how to capture their own moments for posterity, through the arts, through entertainment, through the sheer joy of living...


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As a person who draws caricatures and cartoons, I am deeply troubled by the violent reaction to the Danish political cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. I was also disturbed by the reaction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to an American cartoon that lampooned Rummy's indifference to the battle scars of soldiers returning from Iraq.

It just goes to show that the pen, in many respects, is mightier than the sword. The pen doesn't take a man's life or maim him physically, but instead it lacerates the conscience, if used properly.

From Conrad to Michael Ramirez (both former cartoonists for the Los Angeles Times' Op-Ed pages), I admire both the skill and the power that political cartoonists possess. Conrad and Ramirez are on completely different sides of the spectrum and yet both manage to move me to anger or tears or outrage or sheer laughter. I recognize the impact of their propaganda.

I have often wondered if sitting Presidents ever get miffed at their caricatures in the daily press. George W. gets drawn looking like a cross between a bushy-eyebrowed giraffe and a chimp; Clinton used to get drawn with a bulbous red nose and a chubby satyr's leer; Bush Sr. saw his facial features stretched and distorted into grotesques reminiscent of Tim Burton; and for Reagan all one needed to do was draw that thick head of blackened hair standing tall above his petrified scalp...

Caricatures are a great way of puncturing an oversized ego. Although I don't know for sure, I think it'd be safe to assume that certain cartoonists made Nixon's "enemies list", because he was one of the most savagely caricatured Presidents of all time. Maybe it was because his ego seemed to be larger than life.

There must be a formula then, about the size of a politician's ego being conversely proportionate to the cruelty involved in their public effigy.

I will go back to the lab and see if I can be the first to figure out such a formula...