But then it was everywhere. In a natural purging reflex, I stopped playing it and switched to That Petrol Emotion's "Big Decision." It quotes Saul Alinsky; they're cool, man. The mainstream never picked up on TPE and I still like that song, fatuous as it is.

I heard both songs recently, and those lines from "Beds Are Burning" struck me as a vaguely appropriate description for the low-level anxiety currently causing a complete and total writer's block. I talked about writing and blocks with a friend earlier this year via e-mail, and wrote:

Often I had to bash my way through [school] papers by sheer force of will. Writing as trail-blazing, smashing away everything in my path with my arsenal of words. A battle of attrition as the words piled up to the required number for the paper.

That's what's happening now. My muse is apparently otherwise engaged.

I take a lot of pictures. The city, my apartment, my cat, myself. I want to take pictures of people, but I haven't yet. I constantly see photo ops on the T, but I'm concerned that one of my photo subjects will resent the invasion of his or her privacy and punch me in the face.

It's a strange thing to take a photo of someone who's unaware being photographed, especially if the photographer is doing it as a hobby (for example, me). I don't even have press credentials to justify invading someone's privacy. I don't have any idea what the law says about this, but if I looked up to find a random stranger taking my picture, I'd be pissed.

So I stick with geometry and Cricket. But it's enormously frustrating to be unable to write. Stay tuned.

Postscript: Thanks for all the responses to my earlier question about brushes with celebrity. Y'all step off my man Tommy Lee Jones; cut him some slack. He worked a long time to be able to say what he said.