Still balled up in jetlag and the burgeoning realization that I am no longer traveling merrily through some exotic land, I've had a grubby couple of days at home. Yesterday I totally cheesed on a meeting with a client; he called me when I didn't show up in his offices at the appointed hour. I worked with him on the website design gig that sucked every drop of precious life force out of the husk of my twitching body during the last couple weeks of March. Having finished the website in a hyper-excretory spasm of work, I'm relatively unmotivated to go back to it for the inevitable mop-up job of tweaking margins and getting the President's name spelled right.

I didn't feel happy vibrations emanating through the telephone as I spat out a few veneer-chips of unrepentant apologies. I'm usually so careful about trying to manage client's perceptions of me; they pay me because they know I know how to do something that they find impenetrable, bizarre, or vaguely scary. I'm not just a designer, I'm a shaman, harnessing the power of the vengeful technological Gods through a complex set of secretive rituals. Acknowledging my human ability to suffer profound cerebral flatulence due to lingering jetlag might rupture my image as an e-witchdoctor. Then there's the potential negative effect of visibly displaying a lack of interest in their projects.

Then our friend Richard called, asking if we could meet him at a coffee shop in Dupont Circle right away. Richard is a fellow consultant who is so successful in courting deals that he has apportioned most of his waking hours off to various bidders. He just can't bring himself to tell a new potential client that several others already have stakes in his time that total to well over 100%. If he were to clone himself he could easily provide ample work for two individuals. So he is perpetually in crisis, and probably makes about 6 times what I do. He wanted us to come help him brainstorm a presentation he has to make on behalf of one of his clients next week, and for me to prepare the Powerpoint component. Susan and I were game; it seemed like a better plan than trying to get some work done.

Of course, moments after I sat down with Richard, the client whom I have spurned less than an hour before strolls into the coffee shop. His offices were nearby, and he was ducking out for a snack. I attempted to liquefy myself into a muscular fluid that could slide across the floor under its own power and hide in a convenient storm drain until he left. As is so often the case, my flesh was unresponsive to my true needs, and he saw me before I could even alter my skin pigmentation to urban cafe camouflage. Fortunately, we all adultishly chose to treat this as a humorous little contretemps, acknowledging the small embarrassment in order to dismiss it with humor.

I think sitcoms really help train us for laughing off embarrassing moments like this. We watch so many other people humiliated for laughs on television that we're more skilled at doing it in everyday life. Just as we watch so many people being senselessly shot with little lasting consequence that we're skilled and uncaring in our decision to practice the violence we see on each other. A television has no morals. It's a tool, and like most tools, it just helps us act more effectively on our wishes. Like a screwdriver or a gun, a condom or a light bulb, a computer or a sword.

Since the massacre in Colorado, most of my anger has been reserved for the tool of guns and those who make them a pervasive part of our culture. I slouched on the couch and randomly opened a magazine yesterday to find a double-page ad from a sporting gun association. It featured a picture of a rifle and the headline: "The very fact that it can be so dangerous is what makes it so safe."

Really? In the cool quiet of a recline in the living room I was suddenly as angry as if someone had struck me. Is the fact that I felt so dangerous in that moment precisely what makes me so safe?