The Hose

[Please insert your 527 ad here]

Rewind 4 years to the year 2000. I am in NYC flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News as they called the election for Gore and then Bush and then they all took it back. I remember watching and reading about the recount fiasco…I remember the hanging chads, the pregnant chads, the swollen chads. I remember the political operatives storming the offices where the counting was being done...I remember people shouting obscenities at each other…I remember the signs…I remember the emotions…I remember wanting to be part of the chaos…

Fast forward to the year 2004…My dream has become reality…I am not in a BLUE or RED state where the election is already decided. I am not in the bleacher seats with the common folk...Oh yes, its true…I am in a swing state baby!!!

I got to tell you it feels great to be wooed…You actually feel like somebody when every one is trying to register you outside of a supermarket. I don’t think I was prouder of general Voter Registration efforts than when the strippers at Club Madonna (shout to Xtian, little big head, and ScottyPark) asked me if I had registered to vote…I like taking people down a peg or two by giving them thumbs down or the finger whenever I pass a corner with people trying to rally their base...

I have been involved in non-partisan registration drives…I tried really hard to score tickets for the first presidential debate… I have seen signs being taken down, ripped to pieces…I have seen all sorts of graffiti and obscenities on posters, banners, cars and home-made signs… I have seen all sorts of metaphors and imagery involving wolves, eagles and ostriches…I have been seen every single 527 ad out there whether it’s Swift Vets for truth, Moveon.org, the Media fund, or Porn stars for Kerry.

On Friday, I was stuck in traffic as Bette Midler, Bruce Springsteen and Kerry led a rally as I made my way in downtown Miami with a date (story to come later). Today I had George drive right in front of my house with his 50 motorcycles, 25 black and white SUVs with 2 story high antennas, and silent black helicopters flying overhead…Laura waved to me from the Presidential limo and I promptly return the gesture…I don’t know if the secret service will be paying me a visit because my gesture involved the use of the middle finger….we will see.

Anyways, Florida has had early voting going on for the past week or two but I am waiting until Election day to vote…I want to be at my polling station come Tuesday and see what sort of chaos develop. I want to stand in line for two-three hours with a copy of Maxim (if this month’s issue has been read by the time election time rolls around, Maxim will be substituted with Hustler) under the sweltering sun and yell obscenities and go on long winded tirades to any international observers or party lawyers or press that may be at my polling station and tell them that one of the primary reasons I left my third-world country was to escape communism or imperialism or terrorism or any other isms I could throw out so I could vote and have my ballot counted.

I am going to finally make it inside and then I am going to stand in front of one of those new shiny electronic voting machines. I will take as long as possible until a poll worker offers to help me. I will refuse any help he/she decides to offer saying that “no, no I got this..its just like my ATM machine” or “I don’t know who to vote for” or “sorry but I haven’t made my mind on Proposition 7”…

I am then going to stand a little bit longer with a puzzled look in my face…I will smack the machines a bit, lift them up, look on the sides, look in the back…I will then ask an inexperienced poll worker that my voting machine its not printing out a receipt for me. They will tell me that there are no receipts printed. I will ask them how are they going to do a recount if there is no record. I will tell them how my local ATM prints out a receipt and that I am not leaving until I get a receipt for my vote.

I will eventually get hungry and go home and eat some cheese. I will then relieve the year 2000 by flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News until a clear winner is firmly declared the next day around 1:00 PM or so…I think that’s the way it will turn out.

Of course, I am ardently hoping that no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes for president. I am crossing my fingers, salivating at the lips at the slim chance that electoral college ends up tied 269 to 269 and that our glorious House of Representatives gets to pick the next leader of the free world…

What a glorious fucking civics lesson that would be!!