I won’t spend too much time dwelling on this here, because this not normally a political blog in any way, but suffice it to say that Tuesday’s election made me feel, quite possibly for the first time in my life, proud to call myself an American citizen.
A small group of us (Allanah, Lucy, Mike, Scotty and I) went to a huge radio show/election event at Grand Central Bowl over in southeast Portland, and had the time of our lives. Every time a new state went Democratic, everyone in the place clapped and cheered. John McCain’s speech was eloquent and gracious, and everyone was impressed. That speech, incidentally, was the first time in which I felt I was again watching the John McCain who I actually used to like and respect, who I even considered voting for in previous elections. It seems to me that he lost his personal focus this time, and he spent the last few months trying to pass himself off as a conservative, which he’s not. But that’s neither here nor there.
Barack Obama appeared on the screen to wild applause. Every one of his pauses was punctuated by our cheers and hands raised into the air. We were surprised to see Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey in the crowd, as spectators. I think everyone felt a huge sense of relief. It took me until the next day at work to realize how anxious I’d been lately, because I was able to juxtapose my relaxed feeling with the tension of the previous day.
At the end of the night, our little group of friends did a collective high-five to commemorate the historic moment in our own small way.
Yay. Here’s to a new country, and to a new world.
Today is Election Day here in the U.S., and this is one of the only times I will ever use this blog to write about politics.
I was old enough to vote in 1988, just barely, but I wasn’t politically aware enough yet to make any kind of educated decision, so I declined to vote. 1992 was the first election in which I participated somewhat actively. 1996 and 1998 were the first ones in which I was really old enough (and informed enough) to have my own opinions, and we also had some very important ballot measures here in Oregon (such as physician-assisted suicide) that I felt the need to weigh in on.
2000 was another milestone election, in so many ways. We had no way of knowing at the time, but it was full of many historical lessons and pitfalls that have been documented at great length, not to mention greater eloquence and erudition, elsewhere.
In 2004, I did my part, albeit somewhat grudgingly, but this is the first time that I’ve been very engaged in the entire process, from the earliest candidates’ nominations clear through to the end of the election process. I feel that this is the most important election our country has seen in at least fifty years, and that we would be remiss if we let it pass without taking part in it.
I’ve never felt an adrenaline rush as I filled in the little oval on the ballot with my pencil before. I’ve never felt an adrenaline rush as I dropped my ballot into the mailbox before. I’ve never listened to every single newscast while biting at my fingernails before. This is the most important political time I’ve ever lived through.
Many people seem to be of the opinion that it “doesn’t matter who you vote for, it just matters that you DO vote.” I’m not one of those people.  The Bush administration and their cronies have run roughshod, pretty much unchecked and without serious opposition, for too long over the country and the world, and destroyed our country’s status and reputation in the eyes of the world, and they need to be stopped. Those of us who consider ourselves progressives need to do everything we can to promote change.
Here ends the diatribe.
We now return you to the witty and insightful (and non-political!) blog you’ve come to expect and love, already in progress.
My Halloween was fun, but not exactly in the way I expected it would be. My Plan was that I would dress up as a grown-up Harry Potter, with a lightning-shaped forehead scar and a wand, but just dress the way I normally do, with no wig or anything. I thought that would’ve been very clever and hilarious, but I wasn’t able to find a makeup kit for the scar here locally, so that was the end of that.
At work, there were a whole bunch of people who dressed up, some of whom were very clever. One of my friends dressed up as the dead girl from the movie The Ring. I wanted to take a little video of her, and she asked if I wanted her to walk in a creepy way, and I said, “No way, it’s much creepier if you just walk normally.”
One guy covered himself in wrapping paper with a sign on his chest that said, “To: Women  From: GOD”. Get it? God’s Gift to Women? It was pretty hilarious, actually. I didn’t get a picture of him wearing the suit, but I was lucky enough to get an even better picture, because before he left work, he took the suit off and left it propped up on his friend’s chair. It looked like a golem sitting there, ready at any moment to come to life and start wandering around the office.
My supervisor was dressed in a purple-with-leopard-skin suit and hat, and was a very convincing pimp, which sparked my friend and I into a whole conversation about the fact that it’s interesting how bad people have become idealized in our society, and are now seen as positive role models, and we further extrapolated that at some point in the future (perhaps hundreds of years, but it WILL happen), children will glue little mustaches under their noses, with swastika bands around their arms, and goose-step through their neighborhoods dressed as little Hitlers.
I dunno. . .in my experience, Halloween is the time of year when women dress up either as cats or prostitutes (or the ‘sexy’ version of anything) and men dress up as women.
My brother, when he was in college, used to volunteer at a local cathedral to provide an ‘alternative’ Halloween celebration, in which kids of all ages could come and celebrate in a place without partying or drugs, but still have a good time. One kid apparently showed up wearing a skeleton mask and a nice suit, and when everyone asked what he was, he replied awkwardly, “Uhhh. . .Skeletal Pimp?”
Everyone laughed, and told him, “Dude. . .you’re in a church. . .you can’t wear that crap to a church. Besides, do you even know what a pimp is?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Uhh. . .it’s. . .uhh. . .I don’t know.”
They told him. “So it’s not the most acceptable thing to wear to a church, and not the most positive thing you could be wearing.”
I always find it interesting and telling to see the ways in which people choose to dress themselves up. It seems like a ‘no duh’ when a gay guy dresses up as a woman, but here’s an interesting twist on that theme that also comes from my workplace. It’s a gay girl who dressed up as an androgynous superhero, which I thought was completely brilliant. I love the sign on her cape and cummerbun.
Here’s another example of a costume that I think is absolutely brilliant. It’s Allanah, dressed as a Duracell battery. Pure genius.
And me? I spent the evening making dinner and walking my neighborhood with J. We made Smoked Salmon Alfredo and beet salad, and then walked the streets of Irvington, watching the kids in their costumes. We also inadvertently proved to be volunteer firefighters, when we noticed a strange smell on the next block over. We came around the corner and saw a pumpkin on fire, belching flames and acrid black smoke into the neighborhood. Without hesitating, we went up the steps and each ran to various doors of the duplex. J rang the doorbell to no avail, so she ran in the door and up the stairs, yelling, “Your pumpkin’s on fire!” The slightly stoned-looking frat guy came down the stairs, saying, “Oh, really?” He walked outside and tried to blow out the flaming pumpkin, which only fanned the flames and made it worse. He then went beside the house and grabbed a yellow plastic recycling tub and pushed the pumpkin into that, flames and all. I’m going to walk over there tomorrow during the day to see if any permanent damage was done to the building.
I went to bed at 10:15 and slept until 12:45 this afternoon, when I went downstairs and spent the next couple of hours reorganizing my stuff in the basement. It’s quite an improvement over the picture I took the other day, when the furnace removers piled all of our stuff into a big pile.
I came home for lunch today, and was greeted by the sound of huge crashes and bangs coming from the basement. Apparently our old furnace was being removed. The noise was so loud that I couldn’t even stand to be in the building. I went to the kitchen and tried to find something to make for lunch, and I heard a BAM BAM BAM BAM from everywhere underneath me, but it sounded like it was coming from inside my skull. The walls were actually shaking from the blows of all the hammers. I got right back on my bike and decided to eat lunch elsewhere.
When I got home from work tonight, I took my bike down to the basement like always, but when I got down there, my jaw dropped. I started to utter an F-bomb, but my tongue never even made it to the final consonants to enunciate the entire word. This is the scene that was waiting for me down there:
Everyone’s stuff is intermingled and haphazardly piled on top of everyone else’s, and it’s like that in every room. It’s a total nightmare. I must have been down there for ten minutes, with my mouth hanging open. Even the rugs are rolled up and stuffed in there somewhere, and big drums are on top of smaller, more fragile things.
Yikes.
It looks like the workers will be back down there tomorrow, too, so we don’t dare start putting things back yet.
Double yikes. This is gonna be a really fun weekend.
I’m always interested in finding out the ways in which people stumble upon blogs, specifically this blog. Tonight I found out that someone had found me by typing in the phrase ‘urinating loudly.’ After I stopped laughing, I decided to share some of the recent searches that people have used:
