11-07-2002

Elections

I was intending to avoid writing about the recent elections, but… I just couldn’t do it. There are some things that simply must be said: Here’s my gripe: Everyone talks about how there are the two giant parties, but I didn’t get invited to either one. In fact, I haven’t been invited to a party for a long, long time. And I’m mad as hell about it. The only parties I ever get invited to are things like the company Christmas party. If you go, you’ll waste a perfectly good evening eating gooey things impaled on splintery sticks and listening to people shouting “Huh?” over and over again because the DJ with the eyebrow rings and pierced cheeks is playing the Bee Gees Christmas/Hannukah Album at volume levels the airport couldn’t even get away with. And the people you’re trying to talk to are the same ones you’ll be sharing a linoleum cubicle with for 8 hours a day again starting at 8:00am on Monday, anyway. Do you really think that tonight is so special that they’re going to say something important for the first time ever? Does enough alcohol really make people more interesting? Nobody wants to go to a company party. But if you don’t, The Boss notices. Your LACK OF COMPANY SPIRIT probably gets noted in your Permanent File, but since you’ll never see that mysterious document, you’ll never really know for sure. Better not risk it. I’m sure my permanent file is full of comments such as “turned up nose at charred snail snot hors de oeuvre” and “doesn’t seem to like the Bee Gees …must be Communist”. I’ve never really been a party animal. I’m a “morning person”, which is another way of saying that I’m a social outcast doomed to only wonder what extraordinary delights people experience when they say they’re “having fun”. I wake up spontaneously around 4:00am every day, rarin’ to go. I never need coffee to help me achieve alertness. And I’m a dynamo of energy until at least an hour or two after sunup. But by noon, I’m fading fast. By 7:30pm, I’m fast asleep. I don’t get invited to parties because when evening ‘party time arrives’, I exhibit the same general demeanor and charisma as a 5-day-old corpse. But I sometimes wonder what I’m missing by not going to parties. And I really have no idea which would be more fun…the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. None of my friends want to talk about politics, though, so I’ll probably never find out. I did learn a few things from the recent election campaigns. And since these factoids came from people who aspire to be in government, you know they must be 100% true: Republicans enjoy poisoned drinking water, thrive when smog is so thick you can’t see through it, and won’t be happy until every one of those annoying rain forests has been burned down and turned into a parking lot for Big Business. Democrats require that the streets be filled with murderers and rapists, and if there aren’t enough to go around, the Democrats will use your tax dollars to train more. Republicans oppress anyone who works for a living so that they can take your hard-earned money and give it to the richest 1% of the rain-forest-burning bastards. And they want to fire you and give your job to a 12-year-old in a Tibetan sweatshop who works 14 hours a day, seven days a week for a rotted banana and a fossilized Twix bar. Democrats delight in pouring tax money into programs that have never worked, never will work, and don’t even know the meaning of work. They’re also all evil lawyers and lobbyists who sacrifice chickens and have Satan over for tea on Thursdays. Republicans want to control everyone’s religion, remove all freedom of choice from everyone, and force all elderly people to run out of drugs, starve, and freeze until they are dead, dead, dead. Democrats want to use rusty table knives to kill all unborn babies, hike wages up until all companies go out of business, and hand over our complete defense plans to 3rd World Madmen. Hmmm, maybe I don’t want to get invited to those parties. They really don’t sound like much fun. Locally, we had a couple of pretty good alternative party candidates. The Libertarian candidate had some pretty good ideas about how to reform the country’s taxation paradigm…but I’m not sure I agree with his “tinfoil pyramid hats will keep the aliens away” theories. And the Green Party candidate had some excellent ideas about preserving our precious environment, but his desire to fund the Social Security program with leftover cedar mulch didn’t really resonate with the voters. It’s too bad there isn’t a cafeteria plan. “I’ll take candidate A’s position on abortion, candidate B’s position on foreign policy, and candidate C’s position on putting Rosie O’Donnell and Ozzie Osborne in a room to, you know, see what happens.” That way, the government would know what the voters actually think about the issues. I know it’s too early to see if this whole Internet thing is going to pan out*, but if it does, maybe someday we’ll be able to vote directly on the issues without having to elect some plastic Ken doll to “represent” us. In the mean time, there are beautiful sunrises to watch and boring company parties to go to. Life resumes its standard pace and rhythm. I guess at this point, I’m not going to worry about which party my newly-elected representatives belong to – but while I’m waiting for the Internet to mature, I think I will just drop them each a note and let them know my opinions. Couldn’t hurt. *Note: speculation about the viability of the Internet was added for dramatic effect only. Heck, you can now order a pizza over the Internet, for goodness sake – so you know that baby is here to stay!