| Election Day 4:40 a.m. Severe sleeplessness is something I haven’t given myself a chance to appreciate in a long time. In college it was a way of life, of course; anything worth doing was worth doing at 3:00 a.m. the night before it was due. In my public speaking classes, I got my best grades by vowing never to prepare more than ten minutes in advance, and my paper writing career had much the same arc. The philosophy served me well; I graduated without ever having written a first draft that was not also the final draft, although those final drafts often cited “Telepathy, mental” in their bibliographies and contained unusually frequent instances of the phrase, “... and oh, let’s say.…” Not a lot of libraries stay open until 3:00 a.m. My post-academic career is nothing like that. Rarely is anything “due,” for starters. Any late nights are self-inflicted now and usually center around the opening statement, “God, I haven’t seen Conan O’Brien in forever!” And I never, ever have to get up before 8:00. Except when friends of mine are running for office. Part of not living the all-nighter lifestyle anymore was revisited on me Monday night: the sensation of weird pain you get when you’re setting your alarm clock to go off a time that is far, far too near to the time when you’re actually setting it. As the numbers tick by on the digital readout, you think about all the things you would not be able to finish during that brief period if you were awake. “4:30. I couldn’t even read two chapters of my book between now and 4:30. I could maybe get the laundry and some of the vacuuming done. That’s a nap, maybe.” So I compromised. 4:40. Much better. Eventually 4:40 a.m. comes, and I dutifully rise from my bed. Today is Candidate Joe’s big day. Months of planning, phone polling, and going door to door with informational leaflets with pictures of Citizen Joe shaking the hands of senior citizens. It has come down to today. We have to get the name out there one last time. When the voters of Joe’s district show up at their polling places today, each and every one of them must see a bright, diligent representative of his campaign exactly twenty-five feet from the door with a leaflet and a smile. This representative should be knowledgeable and friendly. Or at least alert. Or at least well propped up and not noticeably drooling in his unconsciousness. This representative should not look like he set a 4:40 alarm in the midnight hour. As I step into the shower, I wonder if Citizen Joe ever bothered to go to bed at all. Monday night, I had dutifully planned to sleep at about 9:00, but I was overtaken by hubris and my camcorder. I’ve been filming the campaign in action, and I just couldn’t resist the idea of being there during the final crunch before election day. I didn’t want to miss anything. I wanted to get a shot of this, get a shot of that. You know, for the ‘documentary’ that nobody but me would ever willingly watch. So I went over and helped a little and filmed a little. People are getting pretty goddamn sick of the camcorder. They’ll thank me in a year, I tell myself as the cold shower jolts me into alertness. Unless they stop talking to me before then. I also went over because I began to feel very frankly guilty about the campaign a couple of weeks ago. I’d skipped campaign meetings, telling myself that I was useless and that nothing big was getting accomplished at the meetings anyway. I told myself I was helping in other ways, like... oh, let’s say, sending positive vibrations to the chakras in his district from the comfort of my couch. As November approached, I began to think more could have gotten done if I’d just been a bigger blowhard, if I’d put down the camera and started adding to the dialog more. As I drifted off to sleep in October, I started saying Acts of Contrition for all the things I hadn’t done. Sr. Marie would have been proud. I walked the precincts, putting literature in people’s screen doors. I talked to neighbors and got chased down the street by their f***ing unleashed dogs. And If there was anything that needed doing the night before the election, I was going to be there. So I went to campaign HQ. I drove some carless volunteers back to the university, which the candidate had mined for support like a 49er. I picked up a button maker with MC, Joe’s missus. After we went back to HQ, I hung around for a while-filming-and then came to the conclusion that I was useless and wasn’t getting anything accomplished. At about 11:00, I packed up and left. 5:30 a.m. A dozen or more of us are standing in Joe’s parlor. At our feet are a dozen Office Depot bags full of stickers, buttons, flyers and refrigerator magnets with Citizen Joe’s name and/or picture on them. The magnets were a stroke of genius. Everyone throws away the paper right inside the door. Even the supporters throw away the paper. When was the last time you threw away a magnet? It could have a swastika made of penises on it, and you wouldn’t throw it away. Even in this modernized scientific age, you’re never too old to be impressed by metal that sticks to metal. I thoughtfully gnaw on a donut and stare at the bags while Joe ties his tie. He is effusive and cheerful. He has hit the ground running this morning. I have seen no evidence that his batteries ever need recharging. He is the Atomic Candidate. I wonder what it’s like to be surrounded by this stuff, to be Joe in a world of Joe leaflets and Joe magnets. To drive down the street after a hard day’s Joe work and see great big red, white, and blue Joe signs with your Joe name boldly printed on them everywhere you look up and down the street. To be the most humble person anyone can name while simultaneously being surrounded by an entire staff of people devoted solely to the cause of Joe. People signing up, pulling strings, networking, taking off of work and school, giving evenings and weekends and money, putting on buttons with your face on them and going into the Joe business. What does it feel like to have dozens of people in the You business? I find it deeply bizarre just knowing the guy whose name is on the signs. It has to be the most incredibly surreal experience possible for a person, unless that person is some kind of a**hole. The opponent is running for the third or fourth time. It must be addictive. At 5:30 a.m., I cannot imagine anything addictive about any of this. But I am psyched to be in the Joe business. MC and Joe hand out the volunteer schedules to we coordinators and give us our marching orders. I’m spending the day at Daughters of America, which is apparently some kind of grown up sorority for the wives and widows of veterans. I grab my literature and a map and head to the car, thanking God that somebody gave me a map. The south side is a vast Escher labyrinth to me; if I weren’t in the Joe business, I’d never go there. I pass the Daughters of America twice before seeing it. I later learn that in a nod to tradition, they are still using the building’s original unpainted unlit sign. Good call, Daughters! After all, signs are on buildings for the people who already know where they are. Standing next to me at the polling place is our opponent’s sister. We each say hello politely but are eyeing each other suspiciously right from the start. I wonder whether we’ll warm up to each other. During the primary, the gaggle of volunteers outside the retirement home where I was stationed were like Woodstock. It was a great big love fest. We had two opponents then, both Democrats who hated each other, and by the end of the day the volunteers were practically making out and sharing flyers. Standing outside for thirteen hours and being swatted by voters who don’t want your damn papers instills a kind of solidarity, I think. You become a community filled with differing single-minded personality traits. Like the Smurfs. 7:00 a.m. A quirk of campaign volunteerism: As people walk down the street, I am engaging them in conversation and asking them to do something for me. A second later, a woman facing me from the other side of the sidewalk is politely asking them to do the exact opposite. She and I are required to disagree about most things. Each of us is trying to make the other’s loved one unemployed. For most of the day, the only people we have to talk to are one another. The language never developed a word for this kind of discomfort. Even under ideal circumstances, in social situations, I don’t like walking up and talking to people I don’t know. I’m shy, I feel like I’m bothering them, and it makes me really uncomfortable. Today, I know for a fact I’m bothering each and every one of them, and I’m here aaaaaall day. In order to do the best job I could, I’ve been preparing for this day for weeks, building up to it by trying to be friendly to clerks and passersby I normally would have ignored or run away from. Unfortunately, that didn’t prepare me for the fact that my opponent at the polling place would be on a first name basis with every f***ing pedestrian in the ward. “Hi, please consider voting for Joe for -“ “Stevie! How’s it going? How’s your wife Pat doing? Did she enjoy dinner last night? You guys are going to have to come by again Wednesday! We’re having butternut squash! Anyway, go on in and vote, you scamp!” My morale is starting to take a graceful swan dive. This is a Democratic neighborhood in a Democratic city, and although I am wearing a button that reads “I’m A Democrat For JOE,” he is not a Democratic candidate. Many of these people are straight ticket voters, and some can barely contain their disgust with me for somehow selling out the human race for not burning Joe’s house down. I do not need to stand and watch them chit chat about little league with the enemy to put a spotlight on how unpopular I am here. I’m too far right for any of these people to talk to me. When I go back to HQ, I’ll be too far left for any of those people to talk to me. I love politics. 7:30 a.m. It’s got to be 45, 50 degrees out here. In retrospect, some kind of coat would have been an above-average idea. The miscellaneous Democratic party volunteer is a really nice lady. She too knows everyone who walks by, and she tells me all of their dirty laundry and peccadilloes with relish after they go inside. I can’t quite figure out what’s going on with her; she seems to either work here or work for the party. She’s campaigning for one side, but she seems to be involved with the election officials. Her husband is one of them. He brings her coffee. I keep my hands warm by alternating them inside my mouth. We gossip and laugh about the foibles of this candidate and that, and then someone walks by and we hand them directly contradictory pieces of literature. Woodstock returns. 9:00 a.m. Our ranks have swelled. A guy from the Gephardt campaign is here, as is a kid trying to get people to sign a petition about home rule. The kid was apparently plucked off the street by the special interest group and paid $60 a day to get signatures. He, too, is a Democrat, but he doesn’t know anything about the issues (including the very petition in his hands) so we get along well enough. When we arrived this morning, all of the candidates’ signs had been yanked from the earth and thrown down onto the grass. The Democrat woman learns from her husband that one of the signs was not 25’ from the door like it was supposed to be. One of the retired senior citizens the election board had hired to be an election official for the day had come out and plucked every single sign as a show of his might. The Gephardt guy has a hammer, so he fixes the Democrat signs. He refuses to fix mine, since I am the enemy, but he does allow me to use the hammer myself. It’s all about principles, I guess. Shortly thereafter, a Republican voter comes by (!) and notices that none of the Republicans’ signs are up. A minute later, the senior election official du jour storms out, marches up to the signs and uproots them in front of us. His haughty, unblinking gaze says, “This is the first time I have had power over anything in twenty-five years! Fear my wrath!! Yoink!” and the signs are on the ground again. “What are you doing, man?” I ask. “These signs are too close to the door!” he wheezes. “There’s no way that isn’t twenty-five feet!” I say in unison with about three other people. “Get a tape measure out here.” “We don’t have a tape measure. They need to go across the street, or I’m calling the board of elections.” “Across the.... Buddy, I’m 6’ tall. If I have to lie down four times between here and the door to show you how far away it is, I will.” His eyes warned me not to tempt his mighty fist, but all he did was go back inside. We got out the hammer and immediately put all the signs back up in a bipartisan effort to fight the Man. 10:00 a.m. A police car pulls up with election deputies in it. They carry with them a piece of chalk and 25’ of kite string. They mark off the perimeter of the polling place. All of the signs are 37’ from the front door. The senior is outraged and nearly shakes his fist at us. I feel like I was just in the f***ing Boston Tea Party. Possibly the most trivial election impropriety in the history of democracy, but it beats staring at the sidewalk and waiting for voters. The polling place has already seen a 42% turnout for the day. All the elections are close. This Bush/Gore thing is obviously going to be great for the country. I can’t wait to get to the party tonight and find out who won. 11:00 a.m. A new wrinkle. The Republican supervising election judge has come out to say hi. He is wearing a gray zippered jumpsuit, six earrings and wrap-around sunglasses. His mullet is longer than my leg. He is not a fan of bathing. He goes back inside and my gossipy friend informs me that he is a multiply convicted felon. Apparently, he is an election judge as a way of working off some kind of community service. He is not eligible to vote in the election, but he has been put in charge of it. He comes back out to hit on women. He jokes about needing to borrow my car. After the third time, I realize he is not joking, nor does he plan to stop asking. An additional volunteer in the Joe business arrives, and with a hearty “screw this!” I go home for my coat. On the way back, I bring Joe and MC some lunch. 7:00 p.m. The rest of the day is humdrum. Everyone has made up their minds already, but I am polite and see to it that they get some scrap paper anyway. Rumors begin to circulate. People in another precinct weren’t allowed to vote. Scandal. The polls may be kept open until 10:00. The felon judge is irate. “This is f***ing bulls***!!! I’m gonna miss my f***ing bus! They can kiss my f***ing a**!!!” He goes inside to stab someone. At 6:59, not even the people running the polls know if the polls are open. They take the American flag inside and lock the doors. I take down Joe’s signs and head for my car. At 7:01, a police car comes screaming up the street. An election official runs up to the door, but can’t get in. She throttles the knob and says, “The polls are open! The polls are open!” The man inside comes to the door and says through the locked door, “What? I’m sorry, ma’am! The polls are closed!” I decide to leave before Curly comes out and hits me with a pie. HQ is in chaos. Nobody knows if they’re allowed to leave their polling place. Joe comes in and gets on the phone. Stay at the polls, he says. He goes to rescue carless volunteers. My job is to await anybody arriving for the victory party. In the meantime, I’m to get on the phone and call anyone who said they’d vote for Joe during the last phone poll. If they haven’t voted yet, I need to tell them the polls are still open. I feel like my head has been emptied out and filled with whipped cream. 8:00 Never mind. The polls are closed again. The people who sued to keep them open got sued. I love this city. Now, all we need to do is watch the results and see who won. 9:30 p.m. Nobody won! Yee hee! It’s a tie! I guess Bush gets the first two years and Gore gets the next two. Oh well. They love the country more than they love power; I’m sure they can be counted on to solve the whole thing like gentlemen by tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to see what Joe did. We all gather ‘round... the county’s mid-day results have been reported... ...Joe... is... WINNING!? Hell yes! Winning! Ohhh, what a relief! Ideas do triumph over cronyism and knee-jerk party lines! That is the deepest breath I’ve taken all week. Now, to go party and hit on some people. You know, after standing in a cold wind all day, when I look and feel my best. 11:30 Oh dear. I’m sorry. Did I say winning? That seems to have been a bit premature. Oh, dear. It was a good showing. Make no mistake. Considering the odds for a first time candidate against an incumbent in an “unfriendly” district, 37% to 59% is pretty good. We have a lot of intangible things to be proud of. Too bad some of us had our minds set on some tangible things. That moment when the totals went up on the dry erase board will still be with me years from now. I’ve never heard all the air go out of a room like that before. Everything just hung there as if trapped in amber. This was unexpected. What do I do now? We are all out of the Joe business. He only pauses once. He's the only one I never see deflate. He's offering me a drink within moments of conceding. Atomic, no question about it. If that were me, I’d have a jagged vodka bottle to somebody’s throat by now. Hell, I may do that anyway. I stay until 2:30 watching results and talking to people. I have learned a lot today. There's always that. Mostly, I learned that my support is the kiss of death. Everything and everyone I voted for lost. My state is now represented by a man that has been dead for a month. My country may now be run by a drunk driver with a turnstile in his death row who wants to build a magic missile shield in the sky as his foreign policy. At least if he's president someone else will be driving. People even voted against the ones I thought were home runs. Propositions that promised sunshine and milk for sick babies got voted down if I was for ‘em. I may opt out of participatory democracy if I can’t get non-dead people elected. Joe is eternally gracious, but I am wiped out. I think I needed him to win more than I realized. A lot of other parts of my life had kind of quietly taken a turn for the worse lately. The campaign gave me and a lot of other people hope that we had needed at just the right time. In a few days, I’ll realize that the hope was as valuable as any other product of the race. I met and got to spend time with a lot of wonderful people I wouldn’t have otherwise known, and the campaign caused me to have a lot of incredible experiences I’d have otherwise missed. I have a deep feeling that someday soon we’ll be saying, “Thank God for that loss. It turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to us.” Someday. Not today. Today, all I can do is go home and be grateful that I took tomorrow off. I won’t be getting out of bed any time soon.
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| I apologize in advance; this next bit may only be amusing to me. Then again, that's never stopped me before. Like most listed sites, the majority of my traffic comes from people who found the site in a search engine. On occasion, if I am very lucky, the server makes note of the terms people had typed into the search engine when they found me. Below, in no particular order, is a list of some of those searches from the past two months. Luckily for the people doing the searches, I cannot tell which search came from where. I can tell ya this much, though: you're all a bunch of perverts. As I've said before, for most of the really weird search terms, I come up like #50. That means the guy who was looking for "big ass she males" was really, really, really looking. I have no idea, by the way, why my site would come up for these terms. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Leaving aside the universal questions (is JC Penney's going out of business? Is Richard Simmons gay??) I imagine I have the Tweef page to thank for most of these. The searches show exactly why that page is so much fun. Because sure, for some people, having sex with stuffed animals is specific enough. For the discriminating plushie, however, it's Asians doing teddy bears or it's nothing. "Asian plushie." Just "plushie" is not enough of a turn-on. Non-asian plushies? That's just weird. I mean, imagine if you wanted teen she-males, but instead you ended up with big ass she-males. Imagine your disappointment. Specificity. Very important.
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| So during the Joe campaign, I got to meet a lot of really cool people. During the victory party, it occurred to me that none of us would be working for Joe anymore, so in effect none of us would have any occasion to ever see one another again. I thought that was a shame, so I did my best to make sure we at least had the ability to keep in touch (I didn't have a pen on me to write down phone numbers, so in a move that felt stupid and pretentious even as I was doing it, I actually handed out my business card. I know that's what they're for, but still. I felt like a jackass.) Two weeks later, this feeble but earnest attempt has yielded me exactly 0 calls and 0 x 0 e-mails. Since they seemed like they wanted to keep in touch at the time, but their actions belie that, I'm left with the reinforced sense that I'm absolutely unable to read other humans. Then I think, "If I'd gotten e-mail addresses from them, they'd have heard from me five times by now... is that bad? Am I bothering people? Oh God! I'm NuisanceBoy!" I mean, it's not like I'm being found on ladders with binoculars in people's yards. (Anymore.) I just want a ping every now and then so I know people are still out there. --- Random Illuminating Memory du Jour: When I was five years old, I lobbied very hard and tried to get my sister's Strawberry Shortcake dolls taken away from her. It was nothing personal; the box said "Ages 3 & Up," and she wasn't three yet. I was all about the Man's rules. I remember my mom looking down at me as if to say, "This is going to be a long, long ride." --- I had a dream last night that I kept a journal on paper, in a notebook that I carried with me in my backpack everywhere I went. For some reason, I was persuaded to fly to England to stay with someone I didn't even know, someone I met online. While I was there, shocking, graphically horrible things began happening to people, and the investigators soon discovered that notes left behind at the murder scenes were found written word-for-word in my journal. It was very Hitchcock. When I woke up, even I was starting to wonder if I was guilty. Shocking, graphically horrible things are always happening in my dreams. Other people dream about winning game shows and meadows full of bunnies and s***. Not me, ohhh no sir. With me, it's all meathooks and the devil. Even my sex dreams are all about old girlfriends, so even then I always wake up going, "ack ack ack! no no no!" and waving my hands around in front of my face. It's The Cell every night of the week. Not even HBO will show it that often. Maybe I just don't remember the good dreams because they don't wake me up. I'm going to assume that I occasionally have bunny meadow dreams. Whether I do or not, though, the dreams I do remember leave the worst taste in my mouth in the morning. I can't reasonably be expected to get a good day's work done under suspicion for a series of British homicides, especially when even I'm pretty sure I'm guilty. (They're engaging. I'll give them that much. My subconscious has been paying attention to all those movies we've watched together.) And I mention all this despite the fact that I find dreams to be perhaps the most tedious topic possible in human speech. When I hear someone begin, "I had the strangest dream last night," my id comandeers my body. I will say anything to divert the conversation. "So, how 'bout those abortions?" I'll say. I'll look around the room for sharp things to hurl myself onto. It's in my Top Ten TRL Pet Peeve Countdown. Dreams are only interesting to the people who had them. Sometimes, not even them. But I mention mine today anyway, and not just because I've gone ten minutes without being a hypocrite. I mention it only because the fact that I've got ghouls in my head while I sleep illustrates my current mood pretty well, I think. I'm in a pretty goddamn bad mood. Apparently we're not celebrating Thanksgiving this year. Not really. My parents (or just my dad, depending on who you ask) were not up to the onslaught of toddlers the house has survived these last few years (1997* and 1999 have already been explored here in loving detail). I understand the reasoning; in fact, I was initially somewhat glad that things had taken this turn. The extended family is almost unworkably huge; it was only a matter of time before someone formed a splinter group. "Oh well," I said to my mom upon hearing the news, "I'll miss the bustle, in a weird way, but I guess this just means more of your turkey for the four of us." "Actually," said my mom, "your dad and I are going to your sister's this year." "My sister's." "Yeah." "My sister's apartment, in East Bumblefuck. Five hours from here." "Why not?" "Well, for one thing, it's in East Bumblefuck, five hours from here. Are we going to drive the turkey there, or are we going to wait till we get there to cook it? Surely she's not going to make it for us, is she?" "No, she's not. We're not gonna do any of that stuff." "Then whenceforth shall cometh the turkey?" "We'll go out, I guess." I realize that I'm not the one who has to do the work on Thanksgiving. I realize that the crack plan hatched by my parents this year was designed to make everything a lot easier and more pleasant. I certainly understand wanting to avoid a rerun of the last few years. But I think the fact that I wasn't included in the decision phase on Operation: Flee Flailing really got under my skin. Besides, I'm a traditionalist when it comes to the holidays, and even if we weren't going to party with the rest of the family, we could have at least gone with some semblance of recognizable holiday before piling turkeyless into the Chrysler. And where road trips are concerned, I've recently discovered this large device that takes you the same places that cars do, except in the sky and in under five freaking hours. I'm saying all of this now to try and rationalize my reaction, but all I really know is that this news just made my face hot. "You guess." "Yeah." "You guess we'll go out to dinner on Thanksgiving." "Is there a problem?" "No, no problem. I only look forward to this one decent home-cooked feast all year. No big. My mouth has been watering for two months at the thought of leftover turkey sandwiches made of the dark meat that you never, ever get from anywhere the rest of the year; it can just water for twelve more. I mean, sure, I've had to leave Thanksgiving dinners in years past to go work at the movie theater and the university, and when I did that I vowed I would never be one of those people who goes out on Thanksgiving and makes it necessary for people to leave their loved ones to go work at some menial job because the managers require everyone to work a holiday shift, but hey, as long as we're mixin' things up I might as well become what I despise. So, where we goin' for dinner? Old Country Buffet? 7-11? Is my sister, whose Indian name is Forgot-The-Concept-Of-Rent-Existed, being relied upon to make these dinner reservations?" "We're just gonna wait till we get there and see what's open." "Oh Jesus Christ, Mom, you-" "You don't have to come if you don't want." So either I eat at the East Bumblefuck Cracker Barrel or I stay home and eat at the local Cracker Barrel alone. The family holidays always make me the most childish. My family and I will be together for the rest of our lives, so it's important to tinker with the traditions until you can find just the way you like it. A dozen little kids running around the house is no good, but this is sure as hell not the solution. My original deep disappointment has given way to six or seven different types of pissed off. My coworker Jerry, who has chosen not to go home for Thanksgiving in the past, tells me to expect an hour wait at any restaurant that's open. Next year, I'm having Jerry over for Thanksgiving. Right now, all I can cook are cans of soup and scrambled eggs, but by next year Jerry and I will have mad phat turkey-cooking skillz. Mark my words. (I was quite seriously going to stay home and make my own turkey this year, but independent polling tells me that, if you don't really cook per se, a full turkey is maybe not the project you wanna start with. Plus, as it turns out, there aren't a lot of "family of one" sized birds out there.) A few days ago I learned that, in a misunderstanding that Jack Tripper would be proud of, my sister overdrew her parentally-supervised checking account by several hundred dollars, thus pissing my father off just in time for us all to hang out together for a couple of days. Next year, it's definitely at my place. I am thankful for the usual Thanksgiving already.
*looking back on that 1997 entry, I have to go on record saying I can't believe I ever cared that much about little plastic men.
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| I find this BOUNDLESSLY entertaining in my line of work. Yahoo has given Yahoo a listing in Yahoo. You know, in case you're in Yahoo looking for the Yahoo home page.
And they're also a little full of themselves: Do you get to decide your own site is cool?* In an effort to answer that question, after months of thinking about it, I finally went ahead and put together a rough top 20 list of journal entries from the last three years, which can be found here. I can't promise all of the good ones are on the list; I can't promise that all the ones on the list are good; all I can promise is that I'm too tired to go through them again. Rereading all the entries I didn't include was exhausting. I haven't thought about a lot of that stuff in ages. And I'm glad. *(Answer: Nothing involving Yahoo is remotely cool. Now, this is cool.)
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