If this is the Silly Season, why don't I feel sillier? In spite of cutting way down on my beer consumption (or perhaps because of it) I feel disinclined to chase down any of the several trucks seem to have run me over. If this keeps up, I might just start taking Wellbutrin again. (I don't know why I always feel I have to arm-wrestle my depression--especially since I can't beat it.) I will just have to find the energy to cut the lawn, which seems a Herculean task from this morose perspective. Susan is going to register voters tomorrow--I barely have the energy to put on my shoes. I can't walk for a few minutes without needing to sit, and I cannot sit without wanting to sleep. Part of my problem is my susceptibility to (continued) bad news, the burden of my great weight, my general hopelessness with regard to the prospects of my own projects, and my dread of handling complex relationships with people--and of letting those people down, as I ultimately must.

One such impediment to my greater happiness is the matter of The Children's Television Sweatshop. For six months, in the summer and autumn of 1996, I participated in the viewer-access fiasco that I shall refer to by that name. I found a certain amount of satisfaction in the venture, contributing video essays to the Sweatshop, until at last its egomaniacal proprietor and president-for-life, a local animal-rights and gay-rights activist, had issued a sufficient number of micromanaging memoranda. I sent a tart and irrevocable letter of resignation, and that, I thought, was that. (He had, after all, refused to run my prize footage--that of the mayor of our city cursing at me from his office window as I was taping a none-too-complimentary piece next to City Hall. THAT, I felt, was unforgiveable.)

Fast forward to this year--some of the people in our Howard Dean group had gotten a tentative license to build a low-power FM station--which I expressed a keen interest in. The unfortunate matter is that the license is in the name of The Children's Television Sweatshop. (It was the only certified non-profit in sight willing to sponsor the FM, apparently.) So after assurances that the generalissimo of the Sweatshop had "no interest in radio"--and I having pledged my fealty to the FM project--The Sweatshop and its Fearless Leader suddenly became VERY interested in radio. Moreover, one of the "conditions" under which they would actually let us build the station was that I WOULD HAVE TO REJOIN THE CHILDREN'S TELEVISION SWEATSHOP AND SERVE ON ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Two words: NO WAY. So I am in the unenviable position of having single-handedly killed low-power community FM in Utica. I am the villain--the well-meaning asshole once again. And the fun part is, I still get to face all these people I disappointed at every other meeting for all the other organizations Sue and I belong to. Yowzah.