Sunday, November 02, 2008

Election Day Eve


Michael and JAL's candidate of choice

Hoo-Boy. It finally draws to a close in the next 72 hours somewhere (if we're lucky and don't get a repeat of the Waking Nightmare that was the 2000 election).

I was reading Mere's blog and had, what you humans call, an eeee-moh-shun. Mere's post demonstrated the spirit I think we all could consider from this moment forward regarding the election. Here's a link to the original post. You should click over.

So as we approach the election, I thought I'd discuss my rather rudimentary understanding of SCIENCE (which, Leaguers, you can never have enough of).

But... it seems to me that we are all but cosmic dust, coming from The Source, be that of the Big Bang or the Divine or both, depending upon your interpretation (your parsecs may vary). We're cosmic particles, wandering about the mass of particles that happened to congeal at just the right place beyond the sun, and with just the right mixture of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, etc... to spawn a planet which could sustain life.

In short, we're made of the same stuff. We carry around roughly the same chemical make-up, we all depend upon oxygen and water and food. We're born, we live, we rock out, and, eventually, we return to the infinite. As important as something as pro and con evidence is regarding Supply-Side Economics, etc... at the end of the day, if we can simply agree to disagree and somehow do it without forcing one another back into the dirt in making that decision... we're one step closer to being more than well coiffed chimps with combustion engines. And, in many ways, that's the real magic of democracy.


Randy and JimD's candidate of choice

There's a lot that shuffles out from that ideal of not throwing a coup because Our Guy lost the popularity contest. There's a suggestion of being better than our nature would have us... and that means we move beyond grudgingly accepting our political fate for four years, and gracefully accept the choice of others as best we can, as equals, even as we plan for another try. And, again, there's a lot that shuffles out from the concept of equality that we're still working on, I think. And sometimes we willingly work against that ideal.

Well, maybe most of the time.


Steanso's reason for being such an ardent Obamamaniac

So on Election Eve, we can pause for that same, quiet night that pre-sages the dawn and the chaos of Election Day as, say, Christmas Eve. Perhaps its to a lesser degree, but if we play our cards right, it could be a night of waiting and Hope, in much the same way that Christians embrace the night to such a degree that the warring factions in the trenches of the Western Front in 1914 ceased hostilities, sharing carols and small gifts (and surely there's a lesson here regarding what we really want, what's truly important, and how we get into these pickles to begin with).

We're not in trenches of a battlefield, but what political pundits see as the excitement of the election trail does seem to plow its own trenches in the psyche of a nation that was probably diagnosable as paranoid schizophrenic to begin with.

So Happy Election Eve, Leaguers.

Go out there. Vote. Be at peace with the election results as best you can. I promise, neither of the Big 2 candidates will intentionally drive the country off a cliff (but I'm not promising anything about Nader).

ALSO

The Peanuts characters are running for office on iTunes (I am so downloading these videos)

Apparently Obama does not know the difference between The Green Hornet and Green Lantern. Which is but one part of a many-fold geek gaffe.

a) The Green Hornet's partner was Kato. Originally played by Bruce Lee. If he's comparing McCain to Kato, he just made McCain 10 points cooler by accident. Poorly played.

b) Conjuring up the Green Lantern's side-kick invokes the silver-age image of Tom "Pieface" Kulmaku. It's a bit of stretch to get to the nickname (Tom is Inuit, thus an Eskimo, so "Eskimo Pie", thus... "Pieface"), but I assure you, its that casual racism that used to creep into comics back in the day. Oddly, Tom was never portrayed as much of a stereotype, because I'm not sure there are any stereotypes of Inuit people.

Oh, well. While it's always weak to see a candidate botch a pop culture reference (even one 40 years old), it's not really an area in which I hope Obama has much expertise. That said... if you're going to botch a Green Hornet reference, why bother?

The wacky Obama-poster stuff came from this thing at the Village Voice. I admit, I saw it first at Randy's site.


The League reveals his Candidate of Choice

3 comments:

Michael Corley said...

Bob and Bing in 08!

Meredith said...

I actually teared up reading this post and seeing you reference mine....on Election Eve, of all times too. :) But I agree.....neither candidate will blow up the planet, hopefully.....so we'll live to see another day. And post another blog, hopefully.... :)

The League said...

We certainly will. Have faith in the system. Have fun at election central. And we'll both find plenty to blog about in the next week, I'm certain.