Today is another day

Good things. I'm concentrating on good things. Here we go:

• Barack Obama beat Alan Keyes by what I think counts as a landslide; I'm surprised anybody voted for Alan Keyes. (Were their tinfoil hats over their eyes?) And it's refreshing to have had a major election where nobody could vote against (or for) The Black Guy because they were both black guys. Yes, it was necessary to make a choice not based on race. Welcome to the post-Reconstruction era.
• In more local news, Melissa "Queen of Sleaze" Brown (that's the Philadelphia Daily News's description, not just mine) was unable to defeat her Democratic rival, Alison Schwartz, even with the ads that said, basically, "My opponent is in favor of rape and hates America." (See, Schwartz was endorsed by Move On, which opposed military action in Afghanistan, where the Taliban sanctioned rape and sponsored anti-American terrorism, so a vote for her was, according to the Brown campaign, a vote for Pure Evil. In my opinion, that fucking ad was an example of pure evil.)
• Yeah, so, um, constitutional bans of same-sex marriage were overwhelmingly passed. But those were state constitutions. So maybe the bigots and zealots will decide it's safe not to amend the U.S. Constitution after all. Maybe they'll decide it really should be left up to the states if they think the states are doing what they want them to do.
• Everyone I personally know voted. Even those who said they didn't think they could or weren't going to. That's the main thing I'm going to remain positive about. Thanks, guys; whoever you voted for, Bush or Kerry or Badnarik or Nader or the man in the moon, you voted for democracy. And, as I said last night, maybe we'll get to do this again in four years!

And, finally:

• No more campaign ads. Back to junk food and beer and car and reality show and insurance and male-enhancement pill and chain-store commercials. I'm not actually glad they're back, but, after the viral skin infection clears up, the pimples don't look nearly as bad. (After the shark lets go of your leg, the mosquito bites are easier to stand. After the rain of frogs and eyeballs stops, the hailstones roll right off your back. I got a million of 'em.)

Well, that's about all I can think of. There's going to be retail therapy, indulgent food, alcohol, or a combination of all three at lunch, I can tell you that. And in the meantime, I'm resetting my countdown widget:



1462 days till the next presidential election

That's November 4, 2008. Redesign your t-shirts accordingly. Woo-ee! Can't hardly wait. My money's on Kodos.

Can I breathe now?

Just about 11:45 p.m. EST as I start writing this; the polls closed in Hawaii forty-five minutes ago, and if anyone anywhere in the country is still voting, it's because they've been waiting for hours and they can't legally be turned away if they were physically in line when the polls closed. I've been trying very hard to avoid any news, but I couldn't miss this when I went online: my swing state of residence, Pennsylvania, has apparently gone blue. It got its very own New York Times news alert e-mail and a "Top News" blurb on the AOL welcome screen. (Red letters and all: Top News: Kerry Wins Pennsylvania.) Gosh, I feel so symbolically relevant.



Overall, however, J. and I set about attaining an absolute minimum of political blather awareness: we avoided every part of the 6 o'clock network news except the local weather forecast, and J. bought some pure-entertainment DVDs on the way home. We wound up watching "Hellboy"—my comment: "Oh, good, something that has nothing at all to do with presidential politics." Pause. "I hope." (Not that I'm saying either candidate is the spawn of the devil...hey, look, a squirrel! [runs]) We watched that till 10 p.m., then switched to the Daily Show election day special ("Prelude to a Recount"); in the process, I consumed an entire bottle of red wine and a Lean Cuisine pepperoni pizza; J. made roast lamb, which took a few hours to cook, and which I'm happy to let him eat all of. We watched the Daily Show, then I dashed up to the office to avoid TV news (I think I hear pundits downstairs). I don't want to know, I don't want to know...not till it's a) certain or b) tomorrow morning, whichever comes first.



Random thing of the day: The bird seems not to have liked the Vote t-shirt at all; I think the strong "V" shape may have triggered her Hawk Panic reflex. (Descended from a long line of domesticated budgerigars she may be, but she still freaks out when she sees anything that conforms to the "above me and spread-wing-like" or "near me and squiggly" paradigm—the hawk panic and snake panic reflexes.) She wouldn't step on my hand, fly to my shoulder, or even look at me straight until I changed into another shirt; then she resumed her usual practice of spending as much time as possible on my head, in my hair, clinging to my clothing, and chirping at my jewelry. (You want the maximum amount of pet for the minimum price and total weight, get a parakeet. Our bird is friendly, intelligent, beautiful, interactive, entertaining, and she cost all of $12.99; she's ten pounds of pet in a thirty-gram bag.)



Between interruptions, browser crashes, and my insanely-slow dial-up connection, it's 12:50 now. Still haven't looked at the electoral vote maps or exit poll predictions. I'll have to eventually, I guess. Well, not if I post this fast and don't let my browser homepage open. (Depending on how able I am to get to sleep, I might sneak back online at 3 a.m. or so and see how things are going.) But, no matter what: It's past midnight, EST; it's past the official poll-closing time, HAST (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time); we made it. And, um, we'll all respect each other in the morning, right? See you tomorrow. Don't stay up all night. (Unless you're on the night shift, of course.) And if we're lucky, we'll do this again in four years!

Mix it up

Non-political, interactive, alcohol-related link: what could be better for mid–Election Day distraction? Mixilator will generate a custom cocktail based on your answers to a few questions about flavor, strength, and complexity. Unlike most online cocktail generators, Mixilator produces results that look like they actually might be drinkable; there's a humor quotient in the drink names and the instructions, but the creator's goal is to generate recipes that are realistic rather than funny. (He goes into astonishing detail as to how he accomplished this in the Advanced Notes page. Sample quote: "To have the machine calculate the measures with so many parameters and conditional algorithms, classic cocktail measurement nomenclature had to start out in decimal form and, once the drink was generated, be translated into fractions and common measures, to maintain classic bar guide style.")



I ran it a dozen or so times; this is the concoction I like best:

Jamaican Amused Dog Cocktail



Chill cocktail glass. Prepare as follows:



In pre-chilled cocktail shaker combine

• 2½ oz cherry-flavored vodka
• ½ oz orange juice
• ½ oz Cora Bitters

Shake your moneymaker with a small iceberg.



Strain into chilled cocktail glass.



Add soupçon whole cranberry.

I might actually try it; I don't specifically have all of those ingredients, but I bet Absolut Kurant, orange juice, and Angostura bitters would work about the same. I'm planning on having more than one drink tonight, and I may as well start somewhere...

Exercising my 19th-amendment rights

Here we are at last: Election Day. Even though I didn't get to bed till almost 2 a.m. last night, I was sitting bolt upright at 7:02 when J. came back from exercising. He did an actual double take and said "Concerned about the state of the republic, are we?" (I usually can't be dragged out of bed till 7:45 or later on weekdays.) We had coffee and breakfast, then went to our polling place—less than half a block away; a benefit of living in a small neighborhood. There wasn't much of a line, and we were in and out in less than fifteen minutes. Back to the house for more coffee, and for J. to take an "I voted!" picture of me. I didn't get a sticker—no one else in my office did, either; what's up with that, Philadelphia?—but I'm offering these pictures as, if not technically proof, an indication that I voted (and hence am permitted to comment on political posts in other peoples' blogs, and have sex with anyone else who voted—that being J. only, of course, who also voted, which works out nicely.)



Here I am in my Vote t-shirt, holding my voter-information postcard (which you can't read in this picture, but I've scanned it below):




click to enlarge



Also I'm wearing a beaded American flag bracelet, which you can see a little better here:







Here's a scan of the voter-info postcard, with the most specific identifying information blocked out, of course, but you get the idea:




click to enlarge



Now I'm going to do my darnedest not to post or talk about the election for the rest of the day, and avoid the news as much as possible, and desperately hope the whole thing's over by tomorrow. Just one last thing...



A vote for anyone is a vote for democracy.
VOTE FOR SOMEBODY!

Evening observations

Went to the drug store to pick up some prescriptions around 8 p.m. En route: saw somebody being ejected from a Republican campaign center—a loud, beefy guy who looked about fifty was bodily pushing out a less-beefy, but even louder, guy who looked about seventy. (Sample shouts: "...but it's my right to..." "...well, whatever you said was the wrong thing to say to him...") I stayed the hell on the edge of the sidewalk and kept my head down; woo-ee, can't wait till the polls open.



At the drug store: Discovered that it's Christmas. The Halloween displays were mostly down, the remaining costumes and candy were on sale racks at the front of the store, employees were sitting on the floor opening cartons and setting up boxes of...Christmas stuff. Christmas cards, Christmas candy, Christmas decorations. Ack! Who the hell starts decorating for Christmas on the first of frickin' November? Can't we at least have some turkey- and Pilgrim-oriented items to ease us from pumpkins to Santa?



Well, I'm going to attempt to get to bed before midnight, in a further attempt to wake up early enough to vote before work. Less than an hour till the polls open in New Hampshire. Less than twenty-four hours till they close in Hawaii. Oh, man, I can't wait for this to be...dare I say "over"? Well, for the campaign ads to end, anyway. See you on the other side of midnight...

One day more

A little after 1 p.m. on the day before the election, Eastern Standard Time; it's literally the eleventh hour, because in New Hampshire the polls open at midnight. On the other end of the timeline, in Hawaii, which is five time zones behind the East Coast, the polls close at 6 p.m. So polls will be open in the U.S. from 0500 GMT on Nov. 2 to 0400 GMT on Nov. 3, a total of 23 hours; and it's going to be the longest fucking day in American history. Especially since the political commentators are already champing at the bit to start calling the race at 12:01 a.m. when the first resident of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire steps out of the voting booth. (My personal goal is to vote as soon as I can—hopefully in the morning, before going to work—and then not watch any news coverage for the rest of the day. [At least not until the Daily Show's live election special at 8 p.m.] It's not that I don't want to know what happens; I just don't want to know every talking head's prediction of what the last ten minutes' exit polling could be construed as indicated is going to happen. ["With 10 percent of the precincts in Missouri now reporting, Candidate X has a 60 percent chance of winning that state, but if he doesn't he can make it up with Arkansas and Nebraska, where two percent of the vote is in, or else Oklahoma and Idaho, where we're predicting a ten-point lead as long as the barometer remains steady, or he can trade Delaware and Washington, D.C. to Candidate Y in exchange for Kentucky and one free agent to be named later..."] Also I plan to start drinking as soon as I get home from work tomorrow. If not sooner.)



Some of the less-scientific indicators are already in: the Washington Redskins, whose performance in the last home game before Election Day has coincided with the defeat or victory of the incumbent in every presidential election since 1936, lost to Green Bay yesterday; and I can't read horoscopes, but if you can, here's the star chart for Dixville Notch, N.H. at 12 a.m. on Nov. 2. (Actually, I'm not sure those are less scientific than the first twenty or so hours of Election Day media predictions...)

Does the one on the red horse wear red socks?*

Everyone and their dog has posted about the Red Sox winning the World Series—I have some pen-and-paper notes from last night and this morning, mostly pertaining to J.'s reaction, which I'll type up later. (As I've mentioned, he's originally from Wellesley, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, and he's lived through 45 years of The Curse. Sample quote: "I'd be less surprised if someone had discovered a new continent. One of the fundamental axioms has been overturned.")



In the meantime, I do feel compelled to mention that this has long been considered one of the signs of the Apocalypse—not as much as it would have been if the Cubs and Red Sox had faced each other in the series last year, but certainly one of the things that people used the "...and if that happens, the world will end" joke about. (And there was a lunar eclipse involved, too; the "moon turning to blood" that apocalyptic literature is full of. If anyone shows up on Halloween as an angel with a trumpet or on a pale horse, I'm going to start stocking up on canned goods with a thousand-year shelf life.)



*The second of the Four Horsemen; see Revelation 6, specifically verse 4. (My last post linking to a chapter of Revelation was on September 3, when I noticed that the number of jobs created in August—144,000—was the same as the number of people redeemed in Rev. 14. [Hey, I just report these things.])