Weird breathing.

Never, never, never, NEVER take a dose of Liu Shen Wan right before going on air!

It's potent medicine! It does what it's supposed to do. But if you take it for a couple of days and figure it's not gonna get around to doing that characteristic thing where suddenly it makes you want to cough up a big old glob of nastiness from outta nowhere, you're just *asking* for trouble.

Then, by the time you realise it's doing just exactly that, you're on the air and in the middle of a sentence.

Yikes! My "Ren and Stimpy" moment is at hand, and *everybody's* listening. (Cue "Muddy Mudskipper" theme on LS-1 in five, four, three . . . .)

Forced with choosing between coughing up my icky blob of goo, stopping mid-story while I run out of the room, or winding up with some disgusting slimy thing stuck to the board and probably shorting out turntables, I simply go as far "off mic" as I can (without fading down, because that is not yet an instinctual action), clear my throat, say "excuse me", or something like it, and move on. I don't even remember the story -- almost certainly something sufficiently grave and important that it *wouldn't* do to make light of in the middle of broadcasting it by self-deprecating humour about the state of my throat at that moment.

And while in personal company you cover your *mouth* when you clear your throat, in a studio my instinct tells me to cover the *mic*. Different actions. Weird.

Aside from that, and confusing myself over time ("am I aiming for 58:20, or 58:30? Oh wait -- now it's 58:25 -- don't *think*, *act*!"), I think I did OK tonight. I'm feeling like I'm starting to hit my stride. Trick seems to be to do it every day.

I haven't listened to my aircheck from tonight yet, so perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I *think* I sounded better. Last night I did the "get into the monotone rut, with declining intonation at the end of every sentence thing" that makes you sound plain bored.

I won't know for sure whether I overcorrected, or undercorrected, or what 'til I hear the air check, but I'll do that tomorrow morning.

It's a weird kind of breathing thing to talk like that. I mean to sound good. Seems to have more with moving your torso than with opening your mouth or consciously breathing in through your nose. If I were smart I'd take yoga or something. But I really have no interest in going down that particular road. Besides, they'd probably tell me it's terribly dangerous to breathe like that. If it is, I do *not* want to know. I just want to learn how to *do* it so I sound *really* good. Smoking's dangerous, too, and look where it landed Ed Murrow -- now they *name* awards after him.

Questionable logic, perhaps, but I'm off mic, and allowed to be silly off mic, and I'm *very* happy.

Only one more day of this!

The good news is after that I get to head up to the legislature, which I enjoy in a whole different way. Chasing stories and putting a show together are two totally different kinds of pleasure. Like bordeaux and chocolate. They can go well together, but only to a point. Or something.

More stories than I can shake a stick at, and *delicious*, dirt-cheap commissary food for whenever I have a slow moment. And commissary food at the roundhouse isn't like the free food you get when they're having "Subsidize the Christian Donkey Farmers' Gynecologists" day or whatever. Because I pay for it, I can partake without impugning whatever damaged sense of ethics I have.

If I'm only at the station for the coffee, I'm only at the legislature for the food.

Never underestimate the survival instincts of a fag from Texas. ;)