Wednesday. Reading yesterday's entry before posting it this morning I realized how, well, meandering and meaningless much of what it was. Maybe this flu isn't as finished with me as I believed. Maybe it's not the flu at all and most of what I've been writing, pretty much with or without the flu, sounds the same. Still, write on.

To bed early last night waking up at one in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. So I got up and watched some of the coverage of the New Hampshire primary along with other news including the assassination of an Iranian nuclear engineer/manager. This assassination business, done by Israel and supported by us most people say (although neither has admitted to it), is a nasty aspect of a world full of nasty aspects.

The assassinations of both the Kennedys come to mind. Somewhat different - the work of two not-connected together wackos in the Kennedys' case, not planned by a foreign power (you never know for sure, as we'd been trying to assassinate Castro at the time) - but still, a major change in the national direction and whatever it was, it was traumatic. In my memory damned traumatic.

So they're/we're out there killing people in all kinds of ways and I'm wondering what that really means in the scheme of things. More than a footnote when the histories are written of this period, hubris gone where hubris always goes? You can say nobody can wear a white hat in the real world if they want to survive, but somehow I always thought we were looking for something a little more than that.

Whatever the truth, we seem to be at war with Iran, a light weight war that may well lead a real war, hard to tell, all to keep control in the Middle East. I keep remembering we overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in the fifties because they wanted to take back control their own oil production and we wanted to help the British oil corporations and give our own oil corporations a chance at taking their place. How much did that really gain us, destroying their democracy, putting our pawn of a Shaw in power? How much did it really cost? You can only guess.

But that's what happens when you get up in the middle of the night and listen to the news. The sinus, upper palate/teeth have been aching quite badly during all this flu business, particularly at night, maybe because the side of the head is getting some kind of odd pressure while lying on the pillow and that by itself will keep you awake. Usually it doesn't, usually you can kind of zone out, but for these last three days it's been worse and not so easy.

I'm planning on cancelling my guitar lesson later and take to bed, catch up on the sleep, do dick else. And put off this complaining until tomorrow, maybe, if I'm up for it, take some pictures later after this nap.

Later. Better. Another lie down, listen to the news in bed to help the head. A call to my guitar instructor and then an email when he didn't pick up and no answering machine kicked in. Checked the cameras online. One of them is waiting on a part, the other is in process, so we're probably looking at next week to receive them. I want to get that last camera to them, cleaned and back before the Chinese New Year Parade in early February, but we'll see. It's not like I'm short of cameras around here; just, you know, antsy and a bit irrational. Not uncommon, I suspect, among us old photographers. Irrational.

Later still. A bus toward the downtown stopping at the ATM, a walk on then to take a quick turn around the City Hall area finding these. Nice idea, nice execution. The city had recently withdrawn their permit to erect a teepee and forced them to take it down and these seem to be its kids. He who grabs the wider world's imagination by communicating better usually wins. Not that a photograph will appear in any of the local papers, of course.

Your photographs are not all that well thought out.

Yes, but the little tents are nice: a good idea, a good follow-up. I didn't spend much time composing the photographs, I'm still a little bit buzzy and quite honestly wanted to come home. So I did. Forthwith.