The Freelancing Life, and Kal Penn

I just submitted the first long freelance article I've done in a long time. Felt good. It's meh, but that's besides the point. To work is dignity, and I feel dignified. To not work sucks, as Bruce Springsteen will tell you in five different ways in every single one of his albums.

In the meantime, I've been freelance researching, which has been surprisingly fun. Being Inspector Clusoe on the Web feels Willow-BTVS badass. Or Cloe-24 badass. And charging by the hour also feels badass. In fact, I might switch from saying "I charge XX dollars an hour" to "I bill XX dollars an hour."

Also, tomorrow I'm going to the National Press Club, one of those insufferable Washington institution's with a checkered past but that can serve a useful purpose when used right, I guess. It's a shindig related to a PBS/ Frontline documentary I worked on the last few months about the poisoning of North America's two great estuaries, the Chesapeake Bay and the Puget Sound, and how we can stop it. (Key component: how we can stop it. Second key component: buy an industrial strength water filter immediately.)Obama's current EPA administrator'll be there and the nation's very first EPA administrator (under Nixon!) will be there too. I will report what happens.

I have so much more swimming in my brain -- Obama's relentless bombing of northern Pakistan (to what end, exactly?), the nasty fucker rhetoric calling for war with Iran, the Obama DOJ following --and expanding upon--the Bush DOJ's constitutiona-burning claims to secrecy, and how I really really want to start gardening. Not because of Michelle Obama, though it was nice to see here getting gardeny.

That was kind of a brain dump for me. I will avoid it in the future.

Oh, wait, I buried the lede. Which is: KAL PENN IS LEAVING TO WORK WITH THE WHITE HOUSE PUBLIC LIAISON OFFICE. I have no words for this.