If politicians were purple...

...I'd be in the middle of a Jimi Hendrix acid trip.

Good gamblers, hard drinkers, and hard-line truck drivers know the feeling in my head very well. It is a state of hypervigilance. Wide-eyed sleep. Dreamscapes of pure reality butressed by occasional hallucinations.

I've spent the last 48 hours in constant motion, sleeping only when the city lights dim, and only departing from hyper-reality long enough to suck down a six pack and watch the first half of the Godfather. Much more and I may, too, sleep with the fishes.

I've been plagued by technological gremlins and broken lines of communication. Oddly, I've done a fly-by over frustration and am using my afterburners to put yesterday in my jet wash. As much as I may need sleep, I don't crave it right now. Like a long run of good cards (after a series of bad beats), or a particularly cold beer at four in the morning...I am on a self-destructive roll that has decent potential to end in disaster. And I can't find the desire to stop. I want to keep moving.

For the well-rested reader...I've been covering South Carolina's GOP primary since about 9:30 Tuesday morning. I literally perspired through an undershirt, a dress shirt, and a suit jacket last night. I'm wearing a friend's cornsilk blue button-up right now. I've been to our state's capital and back. Tomorrow I embark on another long trip to a federal courthouse in Aiken. A federal judge will hear arguments about plutonium shipments to South Carolina.

My body has rebelled on me in the past. My beer gut raised a flag of independence. My clutzy feet wrote their own national anthem. I'm not uncertain that some sort of rebellion... a coup de tat if you will...may be underway.

Keep an eye out for me on the news. I'll be the guy in the straight jacket.