I turned away from my computer for a scant 3-4 hours, only to find once back that in the interim my old employer's just gone belly-up. Chapter 11.

It's the latest boom in an endless series of bad news, but I am still having a reaction. A slow and confused one, staring (simultaneously) at a news photo of a protester of the bail-out with a sign that says, "Save people, not banks." It's always been complicated, how my old newspaper is dying, what was bigger than it or not, what was industry/personality, how to untweeze the web directive/fall-back/meaninglessness from it all, but that just makes me feel (now, still)...thick. Confused. Slow. I'm sad. And I wish somebody would tell a little more of the truth. I don't feel like I have the whole story, ever. I can't tell what I'm not hearing.

Oh! The bail-out just failed in the House. Okay, the moral here? Never leave your computer. Or--wait--always leave your computer.