This began as one type of post and has become quite another. For one thing, I was supposed to write it last week, but I’ve been distracted. Then, yesterday, I was going to try and write a sort of umbrella post covering a bunch of stuff.

It was going to start off breezily riffing on the Larry Craig mishegas — which, as per DailyKos yesterday and the cable news shows today, looks like it’s very far from over — and some portion of it leaked early because of a voice mail left by Craig on the wrong machine. Some days a scandal-ridden politician just can’t do a damn thing right.

I was going to move on from there to make at least some mention of Tucker Carlson apparently mistaking MSNBC and it’s audience for a bunch of gay-hating frat boys, and then maybe take a breather/not-victory lap at the Alberto Gonzalez resignation.

Then I was going to move on to how some Hollywood fools can turn a film making $200,000,000 in two months and entertaining almost everyone who saw it into a “disappointment.” (Be sure to read the comments on this one, folks. The oh-so-easily disappointed Jim Hill has some great readers.)

And then I was going turn a bit sober and sad at things that, if anyone really is getting any shameful joy out of, they should be really ashamed. (Hence, no links on that point. In a way, we shouldn’t even know about the incident from last week that I’m thinking of. But when a sad thing happens to an famous person, it’s news. No helping that.)

But I’m not doing that? Why? I’ve felt stuck for a few days. Maybe it’s the extreme heat wave which, as I rewrite this, has finally left Southern California, or maybe it’s the adjustment I’m having now that me and my day job have gone our separate ways.

Now, trust me, folks, when I say that I’m not unhappy about the end of the day job itself. I even have a new contract writing gig that I’m actually fairly excited about, though it’s obviously no replacement for a full-time position, especially in our present economic climate. So, I’m just a hair financially nervous, which is probably a good thing. I’ve learned from past experience that un- or underemployent and complacency do not mix.

All in all, I was feeling a bit off my feed. Little things that should have bothered me, bothered me. And, as I moseyed through the blogosphere, stuff was bugging me. Like, kind of going back to the Larry Craig story but not really, another post I saw stopped just short of outing a much better known, more or less center-right Republican politician. Since the man has voted against gay marriage and other civil rights advances, I suppose you can argue hypocrisy here as well. I’m still not at all sure that’s an appropriate thing to do.

He just doesn’t seem harshly anti-gay enough to make me feel okay about violating his privacy, especially as he hasn’t been arrested or done anything illegal. Besides, as someone opined to me a few nights back, is it really hypocritical to be a closeted gay politician if you actually believe that gays should stay in the closet? Isn’t this a case of walking the not-talk?

Now, you’d think my mood might have improved when I went to the cinephile side of the street, but it actually got worse. In discussing last week’s dismissal of Minnesota-based alternative weekly film editor Rob Nelson, Andy Horbal made a depressed but very possibly all-too-realistic appraisal of the current job outlook for film critics last week. Now, a story I either heard on NPR or hallucinated about the results of a recent survey regarding blogs and blogging awareness had some positive sounding data regarding using blogs for advertising which could help out anyone who hopes to make a living writing in our present messed-up media scene, but that seems like a pretty distant hope right at the moment.

But then, I took a look at Burbanked and saw Alan L.’s post about at least one blog that achieved precisely what it set out to do. Its goal might have been both extravagant and extremely tiny, but in a tiny way it affected the greater world — or at least a moment in a very famous celebrity’s day in an entirely pleasant and voluntary way, and giving lots of other people a big smile. Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for.