Yes He Did

Adventures in Voting (What Did You Do With My Ballot Joel?)

I voted yesterday. That alone shouldn’t merit noting. Yet, this time it does. I have voted in every election since 1998. It was a midterm election and I remember being appalled by the fact that impeachment proceedings were being brought up against Clinton because he had gotten a blowjob. I’m not going to rehash that particular point because it was 10 years ago and I was right to be rattled out of my cage by what had proved to be an expensive distraction and absolute waste of time. Since moving overseas in 2005 I voted in the mid-term election and receive ballots for various school board elections and other propositions that pop up every now and then. If I had been following the issue, I vote. If not, I don’t. The point here is that each ballot that I have received has been with plenty of time for me to fill in my little circles and walk it back to the post office where I could then ease back knowing that I had done my civic duty.

This year, inexplicably (I say inexplicably because I actually called my county auditor’s office, that would be you Joel D. Miller, and was given very little information. But I’m getting ahead of myself here) I still have not received my ballot. Follow me back to September if you will.

In the first few weeks of September I had emailed the Linn County Auditor (Joel D. Miller) to inquire about the status on my registration. I never received a reply, but shortly thereafter I did receive my voter registration verification card in the mail. It wasn’t a response to my email as judging from the postmark date it had been sent before I had sent my email. It didn’t matter. My question had been answered.

By mid-October I had yet to receive my ballot and was beginning to grow concerned as several other people that I knew had received theirs and had already sent them back. On October 20th, two weeks and one day away from the election I called the Linn County Auditor’s (Joel D. Miller’s) office to get a sense of where my ballot was. The lady that answered the phone was exasperated by my question, which lead me to believe that I probably hadn’t been the only one with this question on this particular afternoon. She informed me that my ballot had been sent out that very day and would be put in the mail the next day, October 21st. I went on to ask why if I live overseas was my ballot being mailed two weeks before the election. She didn’t have an answer, but did suggest that it should be there within a week and a half. Should is the opportunative word here. Yes, it should have been in my hands before Election Day, but it wasn’t.

All overseas ballots need to be postmarked by November 3rd in order to be valid. I write this on November 4th (election night) and have yet to receive my ballot.
What I did learn about, thankfully on Saturday November 1st, was this, http://www.fvap.gov/, a web page that provides provisional ballots for those who do not receive their state’s ballots. I filled in the hastily printed ballot and scrambled to the post office yesterday evening to get it postmarked before the due date. I have no guarantee that my pseudo ballot will make it to Joel D. Miller’s office by November 10th (the last day for overseas ballots to be received). I can only hope, knowing that should it arrive on November 11th it will be tossed in the bin. That really shouldn’t have been my concern though. Part of Joel D. Miller’s job is to provide ballots for presidential elections. I have to wonder if Joel D. Miller wasn’t aware that there was a presidential election this year, perhaps it had slipped his mind. Regardless, Joel, where the hell is my ballot?

Get Your War On (language not suitable for work)

"Moose Meat"

They Live Among Us

I find this video to be the most startling evidence of the dead living among us. Watch closely....

I'm Sorry...What Did You Just Call Me!?

Highlight from the 2008 Spelling Bee

I Am Them

I've been hesitant to post any of my fiction work up here. But as the recently inspired piece that I alluded to in the last post is unraveling on me, I will post this. I had written this around Halloween and its purpose was to be displayed as a work of flash fiction (generally one page or so) in the Writing Corner at Cafe Infinito. It was written, it was accepted and for the month of January it was shown as the inaugural posting in the aforementioned Writing Corner.
Most of my fiction writing has a tendency to go on for pages. The challenge in this was keeping it under the one page limit. I was pleased with myself when I finished, but now that I read it again, I'm not sure.
Here it is, feel free to have your way with it on the message board.
(zombie image courtesy of www.revok.com/zombie.html)
**************************************************************************************
I Am Them

At night we lock the doors because that’s when they come for us. They come out at the moment that the sun settles below the horizon, when there is still enough light to make out the ominous forms that begin shuffling into town. There aren’t many left on our side, most have been taken over to their’s.

Last night was different, somehow they got through. We’ve held them off for five weeks. Several times it got close, several times it got too close, but never that close. We don’t know how they got through. Afterwards when we fought them back, there were accusations as to whether or not it was someone on the inside. As if one of us had let them through.

They say it only takes salivary contact to get the sickness, it only takes one bite.

It’s night again and up until last night we held them off. Last night they got through…somehow. Tonight they’ll get through again. Tonight will be like last night, and yet tonight will be different because tonight, I am them.

Work in Progress

I've been wrestling with a combination of writer's block and general ennui over the past few months. I think its subsiding, I'm working on a new properly written piece and not just a pasted video from You Tube to keep you all coming back. I hope to have it up within the next couple of days.

Jon Stewart's First Daily Show, Jan. 11, 1999

In keeping with the "Then and Now" theme, I found this clip of Jon Stewart's first stint on The Daily Show after Craig Kilborne left.



9 years, 10 Emmys, 2 Peabodys and 1 nomination for Teen Choice awards later. This is from April 17, 2008

Kings of Leon Then and Now

It's been a while since I've posted. I can't really think of anything to post and I've been listening to Kings of Leon quite a bit, so there's the brainchild behind the genius of this particular post.
Take note of the bass player's black Gibson Thunderbird bass in "McFearless". I'm not sure what I'd do (outside of paying $1800), but I'd do things to get one of those.

Kings of Leon - "Molly's Chamber" (2003)


Kings of Leon - "McFearless" (2007)

...And Now a Word From Tio Masclet

Hillary to Obama: "Hey want to be my Vice-President" Obama to Hillary: "um...no."

"Burn" The Cure

I was hoping that they would play this one on Wednesday night, but kind of knew they probably wouldn't.

So How Do You Suppose They Thought This Was Going to End?

Lighthouses, Water and a Helicopter...The Only Thing Missing is the Freaking Out From Inside the Lighthouses

I guess it's just waves hitting lighthouses, but sweet jesus!

My First Day on the Job as an Obama Campaign Worker

Today I signed up as a Barack Obama campaign worker. They've even given me my own blog space on his web page. Below is my first entry in my Obama Blog. I haven't been very good at keeping this one updated, so it's hard to say how things are going on that end. But, should you care to stop by, here is the address:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/innersenseabroad

_______________________________________________________________________
I received an email today from Senator Obama asking if I could make some phone calls to Texas and/or Ohio. I read the email, closed the email and thought good for him. He's asking the people that support him to get out and work for him. I didn't give it much more thought after that. You see, I live in Spain, now how am I going to call people in Texas?

I used Skype.

After high school I took a job as a telemarketer in my hometown back in Iowa. My first job was to sell concert tickets as a benefit for something or other. I hadn't heard of half of the people that for which I was selling tickets and the other half I had sworn were long dead. My boss kept telling me that if I just gave it a little bit more then I could have a snappy Camaro like his. It was the yellow one in the parking lot...surely I saw it on my way in. I just needed to sell more concert tickets and I could have his life. I was eager. I was 18 and on my way to a yellow Camaro. It turned out that my boss could afford that Camaro, not because he was a bang-up concert ticket salesman, but because he was 37 years old and still lived with his mother. I quit.
When I, now several years later, received my bank of 20 cold calls (that's telemarketer biz-speak for those in the know) I got queasy. I remembered my boss. I went to grad school so I wouldn't have to do this, I thought to myself. But, I understood that this was bigger than me, this was about getting Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee come November. I wasn't doing this for a misleading yellow Camaro, I was doing this for the future of my country.
I made my 20 calls and by the end I enjoyed it, I got to talk to some interesting people. I did get yelled at once. The lady told me that I was rude because I interrupted her dinner. I apologized profusely and offered to call back later, she hung up on me.
Senator, if you hear reports of rude campaign volunteers, sorry about that.

...And Now for Something Completely Different

Monty Python
"The Llama"

Presidents' Day Golf Tournament: Lincoln v. Monroe (c/o Fark TV)

Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

There is something about this band that makes me think of what would happen if Spoon were to write the soundtrack to a Wes Anderson movie.

Acts IV, V and VI of The Battle for Mike Huckabee: The Climax, The Falling Action and The Catastrophe (Huckabee wins)

10 More Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama on This Super Tuesday (as if you needed them)

Barack Obama wins Iowa Caucus (a republican wins too)

Final Results (according to The Cedar Rapids Gazette Jan. 04, 2008):

Democrats
Barack Obama = 37.6%
John Edwards = 29.8%
Hillary Clinton = 29.5%


Republicans
Mike Huckabee = 34%
Mitt Romney = 25%
Fred Thompson = 13%
(John McCain) = 15% -- I'm hearing from other sources that McCain got 15% which would actually put him in 3rd above Thompson.


Here is Obama's victory speech from last night.

A Song for the Iowa Caucuses

The doors will be opening at 6.30 pm for Caucus goers around the state of Iowa to make their choice as first in the nation of whittling down the field. That is roughly 1 and 1/2 hours away as I write this. I have spoken with people back home most of whom plan on caucusing this evening. I apparently have piles of DVDs and pamphlets from John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting at my parents house. I have been inundated with emails from Edwards, Clinton, Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. I got a Christmas card from Edwards and a birthday message from Clinton...and I'm not even in Iowa anymore! (In the interest of full disclosure, I am still registered there, but as an absentee voter.)

This song is called "Get Outta Our Town" and it was written by Jason Walsmith from The Nadas and Kyle Munson, a writer with The Des Moines Register. As far as I can figure it was meant to be tongue and cheek, sort of a joke, if you will. If you follow the link to the actual YouTube page, you'll find that the comment writers don't seem to get the joke.

Enjoy

What the Rest of the World is Laughing At Right Now ***SPOILER ALERT...it happens to be us***

It turns out G.W. is a man of the people after all.

This video was brought to my attention about a month or so ago, but I never got around to watching it. Within the last week I haven't been able to avoid it. The people that showed it to me were Spanish. Initially they were laughing, but by the end everyone one of them was staring at me. One finally asked, "Es una broma? No es serio, no es posible." .

Initially when I watched it, I laughed too. "He doesn't know where the Berlin Wall is, ha ha ha" "She doesn't think a triangle has any sides, ha ha ha." “He thinks Yugoslavia starts with a U, ha ha ha.”
It's what comes towards the end when I stopped laughing and started ducking my head in shame. The moment when the newscaster swings through Texas and asks people ridiculously irrelevant questions about fictitious scenarios, to which they all agree that if the President is behind it, then so are they. The agony increases as one man while looking at a map of the world incorrectly marks Australia as North Korea, while strategically plotting the next country to invade, and then marvels at how much bigger it is than South Korea (Tasmania). It spins into what one hopes is a parody of ignorance. Alas, no such luck.

Enjoy…by the way its about 9 minutes long, so you might want to put the popcorn on first.
Oh yeah, one last thing...to friends and family in Iowa, this is an example of why you need to get out and caucus on January 3rd. These people vote and they have a tendency to put like-minded individuals in positions of power.