My Voter’s Blessing For You
by Ally Bean
May the poll worker look up to meet you,
May the crowd be always at your back,
May the screen appear before your face,
May the chads not dangle upon your fields,
And, until we vote again,
May God hold you in the ballot box in His hand.
… Or, of course, you could just go with an Irish Blessing.
Here is what was in my mind when I woke up this morning:
DON’T BE KRILL.
What does this mean? I can’t figure out why I was thinking this, but that hasn’t stopped me from spending a good part of this morning ruminating about it. Because, as you know, I loves me a good rumination.
[Plus it’s NaBloPoMo– the time of year when any & all happenings are potential blog post fodder.]
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After rising, I told Zen-Den what was in my mind at 6:00 a.m. when his alarm clock, set on a Mexican music station, jolted us awake.
Being a lawyer he started to cross-examine my testimony.
[Immediately, I regretted my decision to share with him. Can you understand why? Are those way too many questions for non-caffeinated me in the morning? The answer is YES.]
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So what do you think, gentle readers? Why was krill on my brain when I woke up this morning? Explain it to me. Tell me a story from your life. Make something up. Humor me. Just give me a reason why it was there… and then I’ll be happy.
[Thank you in advance for your insightful comments on this topic of vital importance!]
“Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”
~ from Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments for writing
WE live in a political battleground state. Regardless of which side of the aisle you favor, this is not a great thing. Since the middle of August we have been inundated daily with TV and radio ads, as well as one or more of the following:
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FOR those of you not living in a battleground state it’s difficult to get across to you how intrusive*, annoying & wasteful this really is. I’ve never seen a presidential campaign like this one that diminishes the office of president and insults a voter’s intelligence with incessant gibberish and visual clutter. It’s quite something.
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WHILE I trust that the election on Tuesday will put an end to this nonsense for now, I worry that this 2012 presidential election will become the prototype for all future elections. Because I fear that the lesson of this election is: if you want to make sure that no one gives a flying fig through a donut hole about who wins an election, bother the electorate every day until they are just too tired to care about it any more. Then railroad your candidate through.
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[H/T to Pied Type for the YouTube link.]
[H/T to Carmine Coyote & his defunct blog, Slow Leadership, for the cartoon. Image & link removed because spammers could not leave it alone.]
[* Case in point: while writing this post yesterday afternoon I’ve received two phone calls. One was a real person who told me who to vote for and then hung up on me without so much as a thank you for listening or a goodbye. The other was a robocall from a doctor somewhere in Washington, D.C.]
[Further: Throughout the rest of the day I received two more unsolicited political phone calls. One was a robocall from a nurse in Chicago. The other was a robocall from an actor in CA.]
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 