Sucks for all you folks with incomes that can be taxed, cause Obama's gonna give it all to the likes of me!

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Turner

Turns out the government registered me to vote after all. I found out when they sent me my voter registration I.D. card. I don't think they could read my hand writing, so instead of using my full name, they initialized my first and middle name, thus when I searched to see if I was registered, with my full name, nothing came up. Tricky government. Knowing I could vote, I have been thinking about who to vote for, and I wasn't torn between Mccain or Obama. I looked at my county's ballots on the internet website, and saw that Bob Barr was on there, which I figured he would be, and I've heard things about him. Mainly that he's a libertarian. I didn't know too much else, except that it was impossible for him to win, so I didn't feel like looking anything up. Maybe that's irresponsible of me.

To me voting has become something symbolic, and idealistic, but not something practical or useful. I would have liked to go, and write in a name in every election, national, statewide, and local, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I kept thinking that voting should be something that is important, and vital to democracy in America, but it isn't. I came to the conclusion last night that, though I could not think of a single person I would be comfortable voting for, and even if I could, my vote would still be no more than a throw away. I only want to vote when I find a candidate who I would like to hold office, and who I knew my vote would aid.

My mother, who I made register with me, was confused by the voter registration card, as it had three voting locations on it. She went to the one closest to her, which was virtually empty of voters, and they said she could not vote there, so she went to look for another. Interestingly enough, when I was searching for her location on google maps, I couldn't find it. The address yielded nothing, and even the street didn't seem to exist. She found it nonetheless. It was a small church, with almost no parking lot, on a rural road. Hundreds of people were literally standing lined up down the road, cars lining the street on both sides for two or three hundred yards. She wanted to vote, but couldn't afford to wait that long, as she has a job. She gets off from work after voting is closed in my state. I thought it was pretty funny that the location which was actually in her town, wasn't her designated precinct, and it was empty of voters.

America's political system sucks, but it may be the best there is in the world, which stinks even more.

I got no sleep last night, so I took a nap today, which made my tiredness worse, and I think it has affected the coherence of this post.

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Turner

I did my Sunday morning thing on Sunday, unsurprisingly. My buddy had invited one of his work buddies to do the Sunday morning thing too, or more accurately his work buddy wanted to do the Sunday morning thing with him, and my buddy didn't stop him. This new fellow, who I happened to go to middle school with, brought along his girlfriend, and after the Sunday morning thing, we went out to eat.

I didn't order, as I was penniless. I prefer going out with people who don't find it rude of me not to order, cause I like being out with people, but I prefer not to pay a lot for food if I don't have to. Especially since I can have a perfectly good meal of beans, which would cost less than a dollar, and will leave me satisfied. No one seemed to mind that I didn't order any food. I did eat some complimentary bread, but sort of felt bad for it.

New guy and his woman left, leaving me and my buddy. We normally sit around in restaurants until we can think of something better to do, or I begin to worry that our wait staff person might want to seat someone at our table. New guys lady had ordered a fried chicken salad, which was a salad, but with little pieces of fried chicken in it. She was a very thin person, and apparently aimed to keep it that way, cause she sure did leave a lot of chicken. I ate some. I hope I shouldn't be embarrassed, as this place is called hoboing, and I am quite legitimately against waste.

We left there, and went to my house, and watched Doctor Who on dvd until it was time to do the Sunday evening thing. After that we went over to the ol' movie house, and took in a show. Zach and Miri Make a Porno. My friend wanted to see it, and I wasn't against the idea, especially since he offered to buy my ticket if I did some of his homework for him. Seemed like a good deal, and the homework was easy enough.

After it was over, I told my friend that I thought the movie was precious, and probably the best movie that could have been made considering the subject matter. It did have far too much male nudity in it. Frankly I wouldn't mind female nudity being removed from feature films, as it has no comedic, or dramatic value, but I especially would like to see an end to male nudity. I find the sight of other men naked to be most repellent. I have no real moral qualms, I just don't like it. There probably is a large demographic of male nudity enthusiasts who the production companies are marketing to, thus it is a practise likely to go on unabated. It was awfully precious though; my heart nearly grew three sizes.

Today I got up, and had no milk so I ate my off brand lucky charms dry, with water on the side. My mom hurt her back playing with children, or something, which is odd because she doesn't like children, or anybody really. So I had to help her grocery shop. I told her I would be happy to get whatever she wanted at night, cause that's the only time I'm comfortable going to large stores. By night, I mean one or two in the morning. Apparently she needed her foodstuffs right away, and the best I could do was go with her, which may be irrational, but I'm fine with it.

The self checkout robot made some trouble, but all in all it was a successful trip. I got one of those DTV converter boxes, and now my tv is all digital, but then analog again. I was surprised the picture quality was improved so much. Every channel is cable quality, and I get one or two cartoon channels! I'm coming up in the world. Shame I don't like broadcast television, except cartoons, and the news, and conan sometimes.

That's about all thus far.

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Turner

Some years back, when my grandmother was still alive, and my grandfather was a little less crazy, he accidentally cut about 75% of the fingers from his left hand off. He did it with his radial arm saw. He had, and still has a large wood working shop, where he did all kinds of things, like watch television, read Louis L'amour novels, and occasionally cut wood. One day he got his left hand under there, and chopped. His left index finger had already been missing it's tip for decades, and was the only finger to get spared. He is 92 years old, so you can imagine his other hand isn't exactly dexterous.

This is why my mother seemed a little shocked as she told me that she saw a large keyboard, the musical kind, sitting on a stand in his living room. She didn't ask him about it, but I imagine he got it for the same reason he recently bought his new stove, refrigerator, tools, vacuum, and riding lawn mower, all of which will be replacing working, and knowing him, perfectly maintained items.

He is also building scaffolding, in preparation for his re-roofing efforts. He told me that installing a new metal roof should be easy, because if he got tired, he could simply tie a rope off and take a nap up there. He laughed after he said that, so I assume he was kidding.

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Turner

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."

— Ellen Goodman

I wanted to make a point here. Today I wore a green robe, and a  t-shirt and jeans. At one point during the day I switched the robe out for my hobo jacket, which appears as one might expect a jacket I named "the hobo" to. I also put a knitted cap on. Some people call them toboggans. I never drive through traffic, I always take back roads, where I can practice what I call "country driving", which is simply ignoring lanes, and not stopping at stop signs. My car was paid for the day I got it. Furthermore I own everything I have, and have never bought anything which I had to make payments on. I don't own a house, so the last one doesn't apply.

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Turner

I went and sat in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot for a little over an hour. No one bothered me. I thought about what it would be like to be a private detective. I concluded it would be awesome. Then I thought about what it would be like if I traveled the country, hobo style. That would be awesome too. I thought about going into Piggly Wiggly, but figured there would probably be folks in it who would annoy me, and I had my laptop with me, and I didn't want to take it in, or leave it. Some kids came, and hung out for a little while, there in the parking lot. I hate young people, and I'm young, so that may be weird. The whole time, I wished I had brought some sweet tea.

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Turner

If memory serves me, I had a dream last night, in which I had found a small white mustache comb. I used it on my mustache, but it seems it had the opposite effect most would desire when using a comb, whether it be a specialty comb or not. It's hard to see through the cloud of reality and back into the details of the dream, but I think the comb made my mustache very unruly, and possibly increased the length of it's constituent hairs. I don't recall how I felt about this, but I do know that if I could somehow actually increase the length, and amount of my mustache hairs, also commonly referred to as it's awesomeness, I wouldn't be unhappy about it. Don't get the wrong idea though, my mustache is pretty awesome as is.

So I suppose it was a good dream. The dream also seems to have a very strong cat feeling to it. I can't explain why or how.

I do know why I had a facial hair combing dream; recently I have been combing my facial hair. I have been trying to increase it's manageability, but I have been failing. My beard is far too mountain-manesque to be managed. It scoffs at the notion of being controlled. It takes after it's grower too much.

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Turner

I did not do a lot today, which isn't unusual. In fact a lot of the hours that went by today, I can't account for, but I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about. I was going to do a little research on something, and so I asked a question on yahoo answers. I only did it cause all of the links google was giving me were terribly biased. I figured I might have better luck asking a very specific question, and hoping someone who knew something would answer. After that I got really into reading and answering other peoples questions, and may I tell you, people on yahoo answers are stupid. Like stupider than the stupidest person you ever met, times ten, and then lobotomized with a hammer. The vast majority of the questions are "will you do my homework for me" but worded not so forthcomingly, and "does he/she like me", and those are the questions of the yahoo answers geniuses.

There are some possibilities that can account for such a large concentration for complete idiots in one place. First, designing a place where folks can come and ask other people for information, relieving them of the burden of having to search for answers themselves, will attract innumerable dummies. Second, everyone is dumb, and I should stop having the unmerited faith in humanity that I do. The second possibility also requires that I kill myself, or live in the woods, until one day when humanity truly needs me, I reveal myself once more, and herald in an age of reason, peace, and possibly flight unsupported by machines. (That last one's gonna be hard.)

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Turner

I'd also like to point out that I did register to vote, with intentions of voting for myself, Jack Black, or some other qualified person, but I have repeatedly checked to see if my local government recognizes that I registered, and every time they did not. If this problem persists, I may not vote at all, which I'm fine with me, as I have a legitimate excuse.

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Turner

I was going around the internet, seeing what was up, when I cam across a blog. It was the blog of a fairly interesting fellow, who is an author, and beard owner, and generally weird sort of guy. He's probably the sort of guy, that if I had to, I would be friends with. I usually don't like other males, which probably has something to do with all my extra testosterone, but I probably could get down with this guy.

Anyways, he had this one blog post titled "Why you shouldn't vote". At this point I became very impressed with the guy. Not only had he hidden his face with hair, spent an inordinate amount of time writing down his own thoughts, and enjoyed the fruitier, more pebbly sorts of cereal, but he was opposed to voting.

Well, I read that post, and I was wrong. The fact that he was a fantasy author should have given me a clue about his wackiness. The core of the post was that the majority of Americans are too stupid to vote; that most people aren't intelligent enough to handle the responsibility of picking a leader for this country. Actually I will agree with that, to an extent. Every night I have to listen to local news reporters go into the streets, and find ordinary citizens, asking them to explain what issues are most important to them. The ensuing interviews usually turn out like this: black people like Obama, white people like Mccain, everybody wants lower gas prices, and better jobs. The black and white thing probably has to do with me living in Alabama. (Isn't it obvious if you go out in the streets in Alabama that an overwhelming majority of people are going to vote inside their race, if given the opportunity? )

What upset me about his point of view wasn't that he thought people are stupid, it was that he thought only smart people would be able to understand the issues in this election, namely cutting funding to universities, equal rights, good health care, ability to get a good job, pollution, and gay marriage. Those are the ones he mentioned anyway. Why does that upset me? Because I think it's stupid to give the government power over mostly everything, but especially social issues.

I dont think the Government is competent enough to handle education, equality, healthcare, jobs, the environment, or marriage. The only way the government could address those issues would be to remove freedoms. I could talk a long time on each one of those issues, but suffice it to say, ultimately I believe that these social issues that people keep insisting are the governaments responsibility are not, and the government should not be allowed to regulate them.

In all honesty though, I probably could still get down with the guy, we would just argue a lot, until one of us decided that he had been wrong all along. I also don't much mind fantasy authors or readers, its the books I don't like. If your read fanatsy books, you are probably a little weird, but I haven't crossed you off my list of folks I'd like to know. Personally, I prefer science fiction, and that makes me weird too, I suppose.

Undoubtedly there are folks who believe I'm crazy, and I won't argue with that, but if you think I'm wrong, you ought to tell me so. Who knows, we may be able to work this whole government/politics thing out.

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Turner