Monday, September 15, 2003

Soup Alert

For those of you who are new to weblogs: When the operator of the page you're visiting is swamped with deadlines and just too busy to post witty observations, pithy remarks and links to items of great interest elsewhere on the 'net, it is traditional to put up a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup as a means of saying, "I'm occupied and I may not be posting for a while but I haven't abandoned you and I will return shortly." Of course, by "traditional," I mean that I do this and almost no one else. But it's a tradition around here, and that's all that counts.

Yes, I am busy. And yes, I am way, way behind in answering e-mail so if you're waiting for a reply and you aren't the child of some high Nigerian official who wants to use my bank account to transfer $47 million bucks into this country, my apologies. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, thanks to all of you who have made donations to feed the raccoons that invade my backyard and devour a large size bag of Friskies almost every evening. They are also lately engaging a game which seems to involve knocking over the water dish and playing some kind of Raccoon Hockey with it, rolling it all over the yard. This seems to cause them to work up even more of an appetite so keep those donations coming. Muchas gracias.

• Posted at 5:50 PM · LINK

Da Recall

Like you and everyone else, I have no idea what the delay in the recall election will mean, or even if it will get undone. Cruising political websites just now, I see opinions are all over the place: It'll help Davis, it'll hurt Davis, it'll help Cruz, it'll hurt Cruz, etc. If the Supreme Court overturns the postponement, we'll all be back arguing about Florida again. This thing is such a circus, P.T. Barnum should get royalties.

This afternoon, I helped my mother mark her absentee ballot, just in case they matter. I must say it is a little confusing. In the interest of supposed fairness, the order of names is not alphabetical but was determined by a scrambling of letters. "R" comes before "W" and so on. To further complicate matters, the top position is different in each of the state's 80 assembly districts.

This makes it messy because what you have to do — or at least, what my mother has to do — is to punch out a hole (or "chad," as we now call them) on a punchcard ballot. Which hole do you punch? Well, you consult the sample ballot, find out which number corresponds to the vote you wish to cast, then you punch out that number hole on the ballot. For example, to vote against the recall, as she wished to do, you punch out chad #5...I think. At least, that's what I punched out for her. I hope it's right. Then she wanted to vote for Cruz Bustamante on the second part but, wading through the ballot, she literally could not find his name. That's why she asked me to help...and even though I have 20-20 vision and I'm pretty observant, I must admit I had a little trouble finding him.

Back in the last presidential election, I had little sympathy for those who claimed that a confusing ballot had caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. I guess I thought that if you weren't wise enough to figure out the ballot, you almost didn't deserve to vote. But my mother is very smart and alert, and today it seemed quite possible that without me there to help, she would have marked her ballot wrong. At the very least, she couldn't and wouldn't be sure she'd voted the way she wanted.

My mother used to run a polling place at our home, back when the ballots were paper that you marked with an "X." After the polls closed, the ballot box was opened and the precinct workers would sit in our living room, often until late at night, and count the votes by hand. I can remember the year they went to punch cards and everyone said, "Oh, this will be so much more accurate. There will be no questions that the vote is correct."

Sure hasn't worked out that way, has it?

• Posted at 4:30 PM · LINK

One Not-So-Angry Man

Several years ago, I got a call for jury duty and dutifully reported to the courthouse, even though I knew the chances of my getting on a jury were about the same as my chances of getting on Sharon Stone. Neither happened but I got a column out of it, and I have just posted that column. Here's the link.

• Posted at 2:21 AM · LINK

Sufferin' Succotash!

I'm not sure I understand this news item but it's something about scientists using Sylvester the Cat to illustrate the different ways in which different nationalities describe things. Or something like that.

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK