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Sigh of relief

November 4, 2008 / / 1 Comment

We won.  Sweet Christ, we fucking won.

I convinced Megan to leave the apartment and go watch election coverage at a bar down the street around nine o’clock.  We’d already had a few before we left, as (preemptive novocaine)/(celebratory drinks).

When the news came in, the other side of bar saw their TV first, and began screaming and clapping.  Our side quickly turned to the TV to see that Obama is the next president of the United States.  Drinks were raised, and strangers were toasted.  There was a powerful feeling of good will, and personally, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.  Our country is finally on the right track.

We fucking won.

The Marine lesbian who had befriended us, Kee-linn*, informed us that she was heading out back of the bar to smoke a bowl, and that we were coming with her.  As we walked outside, I could heard cars honking their horns in celebration, and people from blocks around screaming.

I haven’t felt anything like this since I went to the Kerry rally in 2004.  The joy in the air is almost palpable.

*She wasn’t Asian. That’s just a phonetic spelling of what I think her name was.

Early Voting

November 3, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Megan and I went to the county clerk’s office to cast our votes early yesterday.  Early voting hours were extended to Sunday due to the large turnout for the previous days. As of Friday, 26,000 voters had already cast their ballots. Even without the weekend and today, that’s already about 15% of eligible voters.

Overall, it took us just under two hours to vote. Certainly not as bad as the lines in Atlanta, but it’s nothing to be proud of.

I took a few pictures while I was there, documenting the huge amount of people.

Have a look.

GO VOTE, GODDAMMIT!

Hunting

October 20, 2008 / / 4 Comments

Something occurred to me the other day that seems very strange.

Imagine you’re riding with a friend on a country road, when suddenly a fox appears in the middle of the road. The driver has plenty of time to safely hit the brakes, but doesn’t. The fox sees the oncoming car and tries to get to the shoulder, but your friend swerves to intentionally run over and kill it. You’d think your “friend” was a psycho, right?

How is that appreciably different from hunting?

I’ve never met anyone who goes out hunting because he’s hungry and needs a deer to feed his family. Likewise with killing a rabbit for a pair of gloves. There’s nothing you can get hunting that you can’t buy faster, easier, and cheaper somewhere else: typically, in ways that don’t involve things like synthetic urine, heart attacks in the middle of nowhere, and hundreds or thousands of dollars in clothing and equipment.

What it boils down to is that that these people go out into the forest and kill things because they just… really like to kill things. Doesn’t that seem a tad–I don’t know–sociopathic? At least in my hypothetical situation, your friend driving didn’t go out with the explicit intention of killing something.

I don’t have a problem with hunting. If someone wants to get up before dawn so they can sit in a tree, balance a rifle across their knees, and drink a beer, great. Have fun with that. But every time I find out someone I know is a hunter, I’m forced to wonder what it is that they find pleasurable about killing animals, and why that behavior is still considered normal.