02 November 2010

The Mid-Terms

I got home last night, bypassing the Willow to get in a work-out, and realized the season has really changed. I knew Election Day was going to be a long one, from early voting in the Big Deal and late voting in the Big Pink annual meeting, and then some drinks to watch the results come in and see our collective fate.

I put on shorts and a long sleeve shirt to work out and the ensemble didn’t make it. My fingers chilled as I lifted the dumbbell, and did not get anything like an hour of plodding along with my iPod, listening to more chapters of the endless and elliptical Boomer epic “Freedom,” by Michael Frantzen.

The problem with audio-books is that I can’t tell how many more times I have to listen to the Rashomon of modern literature. All the authors I have read lately- Frantzen, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Adam Ross and Nigel Farndale- share a literary devise that is starting to get on my nerves.

In this narrative scheme, multiple characters tell the same story un-sequentially, like Kurosawa classic film. These authors fill in the details as one arrives, with them, eventually, at the dramatic denouement. Some of which I get.

I think. I am taking a break with a real book, short, pithy and linear called “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis. He explains exactly how those scumbags ruined the economy and stole my retirement.

I read a few chapters in growing disbelief at the culpability of the Bond Traders, and saw the Giants beat the Texas Rangers to close out Major League Baseball for the 2010 cycle.

I turned off the big screen, unmoved by the end of the fifty-year draught. I was simmering about the cause of the financial meltdown, and tossed in the rack overnight, running columns of numbers through my brain. That damned little rat dog on the first floor started barking around three, and I wanted to bark back.

Finally it was too late to be early anymore, and I thought I would turn on the computer and actually look at the ballot for Arlington County before I went over to vote. I think I voted for the wrong candidates last time, not that it matters.

First in the message queue, though, was a question about airline safety in the wake of the Toner Cartridge attacks. I frantically typed back: “Short answer is that flying domestically is probably as safe as it has ever been.”

“Our screening is much better than the Brits, who were arguing until last Friday that security should be loosened and that the Cousins (Us) were being unreasonable with the strictness of our search regime. The effectiveness of the passenger screening process is onerous, to be sure. Coming back from Berlin, for example, while already in a secure German airport, I was again frisked, x-rayed and scanned before being allowed to proceed to US-bound gates.

That is why these relatively sophisticated devices were inserted into the FedEx and UPS systems. Normally they would never come in contact with passengers, though they did overseas getting the to the distribution centers in Dubai and England. The exclusion of cargo is much more stringent now.

There is more to the story this morning. The assholes apparently tried a dry run in September without explosives- they say the bomb makers were trying the timing. The cell phone detonators had no sim cards, which meant that they were useless as phones and only good for timing.

Hence the dry-run in September.

Anyway, what this means is that the pain-in-the-ass pat-downs has worked well enough that they are going around that altogether and passenger jets are probably safer than ever.”


(Slick Jihadi Publication from the same jerks who built the bombs. Screw their copyright.)

I blasted that off, thinking that I would like to personally mash the button on a Hellfire missile to kill those jerks. I saw one of the chapters of the English-language jihad rah-rah magazine “Inspire.” On page 51 is a neat article on low-cost terror tactics to be used on U.S. Soil.

I was seething by the time I got to the League of Women Voters guide to the ballot. I made some notes and shrugged on a heavy jacket, locked up the place and headed down the stairwell to the polling station.

It was not as bad as I expected. I think I voted absentee in the last one to avoid the crowd, which I recall having been bad in the mid-terms before. Anyway, I trudged over in the darkness after ejecting the iPod from the dock and then forgetting to put the earbuds in my pocket. I was twenty minutes early and the light at the backdoor of the Culpeper Gardens Assisted Living Facility where the polling station is set up in the basement multi-purpose room was burned out.


Cold and dark. I had checked to make sure that the polls opened at six, but it didn’t look like it. I scrolled through messages on the demonic Droid phone, randomly deleting ones I wanted to answer.

An election volunteer was putting up instructions on the wall that neither of us could see. I actually did my homework and reviewed the League of Women Voters guide on line before I left.

Ten minutes before the door was supposed to open I got some company, a jolly fellow in a bow tie, ready to head on to the office. Then another large man, silhouetted in the darkness, and then a determined woman in a bike helmet. I saw no rage and no crowd.

"Everyone must have voted absentee this time," said the man behind me.

Or maybe the spirit just isn't there in the Blue Bastion of Arlington this cycle, with the Republicans unlikely to make any inroads, and the House likely to be lost elsewhere.

The door opened a few seconds before the network at Verizon turned over 0600, and one of the volunteers earnestly mouthed the words:

"The Polls are opened!"

I raced against an elderly man headed for the two polling volunteers who sat behind touch screen devices. It was paper records the last time I volunteered. The young woman to my left was fast, used to the touch-screen life, and processed the senior citizen quickly.

I dealt with a white guy about my age, who hunted uncertainly through the drill of identifying me as a resident of the precinct. He asked me my name, once he found it on the electronic rolls, and I spelled it for him and recited my address. He handed me back my driver's license with a yellow card that I, in turn, handed to the lady at the line to the electronic voting machines.

I don't trust them, but that is the way it is. She inserted her card to activate the machine, and I raced through the candidates, state constitutional amendments and bond issues:

Patrick Murray, a retired army officer versus that scumbag Jim Moran in the Congressional race;

A guy named Kelly, the only real alternative to the incumbent scumbag County Councilman, since a vote for Green would be wasted even more thoroughly;

"Yes" on three Tax-related initiatives on the state constitution; including relief for 100% disabled vets;

"Yes" to bonds to improve Metro, or at least finish the appalling mess that is I-66; "no" to expansion of County Government and infrastructure; "yes" to expanded open space and "yes" to a hundred million for the school district.

Then it was done. The machine asked me if I was sure, and I really didn't know but hit the screen anyway. Being among the first to finish (the old timers get a step on us waiting in the darkness outside since they can wait at the inner door) they didn't give me my decal for my lapel that states: "I Voted!"

I asked for one, looking at the short line of early birds, which included a couple with a stroller.

I asked for mine so I could irritate everyone I met later in the day with my smug good citizenship, and it wasn't until I got home that I looked at it and saw the nice lady had given me the sticker intended for children that accompany their parents to the polls: "Future Voter!"

Well, I shrugged, I will do that. Hope you do, too.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
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