ch-ch-ch-changes

"turn and face the strain"...

today i realized how little i've integrated myself into my not-so-new-neighborhood, because it took me nearly 30 minutes to find my polling place. in my circling of streets with no names, (wtf is it with this city and the lack of corner signs??!!) twice i encountered the same giggly group of latinas handing out yellow flyers: "conseguir el voto!" but not one of them knew where i should go. were they really volunteering, lol, or just cutting school? but i perservered, and finally found the stinky gymnasium. the outcome was so foregone, the only campaign signs were stuck willy-nilly in a chain-link fence across the street. i was relieved diebold had made no inroads (i'm sure precincts like this are waaaaaaaaaay down the list) and circled away with my felt-tip pen.

the powdery polyestered volunteers (what was it like to be a suffragette, grammy?) kept remarking it was the busiest election day they'd ever seen. (did you vote for harding, nana?) they were out of the house and there were boxes of cookies and donuts on every table; maybe that's why their day seemed so lively. my checker offered that alot of people from my huge new building had already voted. civic-mindedness from so many recent residents was reassuring. none of us lived in this neighborhood last election.

admittedly, i can view the world too easily through blue goggles. my shock and disgust upon waking the morning after in 2000 is still quite tenable. in '04 nobody still felt anger about those shady shenanigans ? i thought surely enough people in the interior must be outraged and informed enough to get off their fat asses to effect change. was "survivor" that much more compelling? didn't they have tivo? ok, vcr's? how did they watch porn ?... their prescriptions became unaffordable, their pensions blew away, their jobs got outsourced and their sons and daughters shipped off to the middle east to be maimed and killed. still nobody could reconcile "what's the matter with kansas?" they fell in line behind the frat boys, lawyers and ceos who hoodwinked them with costumes and cliches, and chuckled all the way to the bank.

"mission accomplished"??????? i nearly threw my tv out the window.

this list is a only scratch:

• the pathological evasion of personal accountability (nice job, brownie.)
• the negligence and incompetence during and after katrina
• the hypocritical sliding scale on the value of human life -- terry schiavo, soldiers with no body armor, stem cell research and 10,000 juveniles in prison for life with no parole
  
• the erosion of our civil liberties
• the mexican fence
  
• the slashing of funding for things like public schools and battered women
  
• the faith-based disinformation mandated in sexual education
• the moral blockades tacked onto humanitarian packages for aids and female heath initiatives abroad
• the absolute disdain for the future of the natural world, evidenced by suppressing energy conservation, encouraging timbering and drilling, and the slaughter of iconic wild mustangs
• the utter disregard for joe 6-pack's welfare while mr. moneybags gets a bigger options package every year
• the stunning ballooning of the national debt
• the president's belief in his personal superiority over our system of checks and balances
• the reality of no wmds in iraq
• if an american lives to be 80, he stands an equal chance of being killed by a terrorist or a comet
  
• abu ghraib and guantanamo
• the hubris of waging an invasion and war with insufficient manpower, arms, no real plan, and zero justification
  
• the destabilization of the middle east in direct proportion to our actions there
• 30% of americans can't name what year 9/11 occurred
  
• our plummeting percentages of respect throughout the world
• "stay the course," but suddenly they "never" were staying the course. doesn't he know the daily show keeps video archives? lmao.
  

the commonwealth looks to make history tonight, with a black man winning the governorship by a landslide. he ran a clean fight and never let his opponent drag him into the gutter. "are you ready for a change?" apparently, yes. but has the collective rip van winkle woken up too?

if kerry had found the balls to tell the joke the way it had been written, i'd feel more optimistic. ffs, take a stand. the tide is turning, find a goddamn oar and help row. the democratic party to me still lacks message and focus, however they may well take the numbers tonight. let's hope they don't squander this and can get their act together soon.

Still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild,
a million dead end streets and
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet...

obama anybody?