This year's November farce
by HappySysiphus, Unknown News
Nov. 1, 2006
I am going to vote. I don't know why, but I am going
to do it.
I am going to pack my ass over to the Baptist Church
where my polling place has been set up, and I am going
to put a mark on a piece of paper. Then I am going to
go home and pretend that the mark I have made and the
marks of my countrymen and women have had something to
do with what the man on the television show called
"News" says about the "Results."
Then I will pretend that those results actually
matter.
|
|
|
|
It'll be fun, like playing make believe, like slamming
your foot to the floor on the passenger side of an
automobile when a little dog runs out into the middle
of the highway.
I know there is no brake there, but darn it, I have to
try to save that dog!
So I will vote, because they are still bothering to
have an election.
As I ponder this, a memory comes to mind of the time I
was a student of journalism at Eastern New Mexico
University. I covered a gubernatorial debate for my
news writing class, and in the process interviewed
numerous bystanders and participants
including the
then-sitting Governor of New Mexico, Republican Gary
Johnson, and the even bigger fart blossom that was
running against him whose name is not worth
remembering.
The exchange that sticks in my memory the most, I must
say, is not my face-to-face and mildly hostile
questioning of the Governor of my state, but rather
the short and amiable conversation I had with Mr. Tom
Martin, local business man, ex-hippie, and owner of
the not-so-world-famous Taco Box fast food chain of
restaurants.
I asked him which candidate would be best for Taco Box
and he fucking
|
|
|
shrugged, "They're both pro business, I
don't think it will affect me either way."
Wow. There you have it kids, an election providing the
choice between management's candidate and the
candidate of management.
So it was then, and oh so much more is it today.
I look at this year's November farce with an almost
sweet, detached amusement. I wonder how it will play
out.
Will the crazy, crazy, crazy policies of the last five
years turn out to be in the same family as the force
one applies to one's body in the act of scooting a
chair to one side?
That is to say, has this been a truncated, one-time,
powerful jolt of our government's muscles to budge our
political and mental positions rightward?
If so then it is now time for the corresponding
rebound of the softer, leftward motion that will
re-center our ass in the chair.
If not, I am afraid that we are in mid scoot off the
edge of the fucking plank.
Then it's the brief, sickly moment of dropping, the
wet crash of hitting the sea, the
first, salty, liquid
inhalation of drowning, and the final violent
punctuation of the sharks' teeth, row on row ...
Happy Halloween, kids. Don't forget to vote!
© by the author.
| We're usually unable to forward readers' emails, but both readers and authors are invited to visit our 'dialogue' page for two-way communication: |
|
|
|
This is an archived Unknown News page. For newest material, visit our main page.
|
|
It'll be fun, like playing make believe, like slamming your foot to the floor on the passenger side of an automobile when a little dog runs out into the middle of the highway.
I know there is no brake there, but darn it, I have to try to save that dog!
So I will vote, because they are still bothering to have an election.
|
|
|
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
|
