fine whine

For the vast wealth of information bouncing around the internet there aren't many links between the individual (tid)bits. I can find reams of biographical information on the life, political and professional, and even his entire filmography (as himself and otherwise) of former wrestler, actor and governor Jesse Ventura. That's not enough, though.

Tonight as I am watching Ricochet, I was struck by something. In it, Jesse Ventura gets run through by a very, very mean John Lithgow (I hope I didn't give anything away). I thought back to the last two films I'd watched with Jesse in them, and in both cases (Running man and Predator) he doesn't live to the final scene (oops, there I go giving things away again).

Knowing those bits of information, I wanted to know more. Does Jesse Ventura ever live through an entire movie? As he is the star of Abraxas, guardian of the universe, through that one he probably makes it, but what about the others?

I could always put it out on Ask MetaFilter or Google Answers or Ask Yahoo, or send it to Cecil at The Straight Dope, but then I'd be asking a person, querying the collective knowledge of people, not the collected information among the databases.

I tried Asking Jeeves, but it was useless. I remember the days when that site was useful, but now it looks so unfamiliar and unfriendly and, well, useless that I doubt I'll try to use it again in the near future. I shouldn't need something like Ask Jeeves, though, should I?

It's all out there somewhere, so why haven't wse connected all the dots and dotted all the Ts? Inquiring minds must know.

I've begun to lose faith in the so-called "all movie guide" website (found at www.allmovie.com). They've led me astray before, but never so badly as when they called Prizzi's honor a "dark comedy" (being of "High Artistic Quality" no less). It was, you could say, a bit dark, but I didn't find myself laughing. Perhaps it was its "wickedly post modern"-ism that left me bored, but really this movie was an exercise in endurance to watch. Pain, perhaps.

Maybe I just missed the "subversive subtext" or something, but I'm not going to trust them nearly as much as I had before. This is not the first movie I'd hated that they'd loved, just the longest.

I think I have more to say about the election, but everytime I think about opening my mouth I feel instead that I should just grab something blunt nearby and hit the person instead.

This is not, despite what you may think, the proper response to the democratic process.

I'd like to share a little story with you.

Earlier today something happened that made a lot of people unhappy. One man made a phone call.

Known only as "ekote", the (bargain site) Fatwallet member called Viking office supplies to modify his recent order, twenty five dollars and change of pens and envelopes and a free DVD player. The representative he called told him that the player (a $79.99 value) was meant for a specific promotion with printers and his order wasn't valid for it. Within minutes the DVD player seemed to disappear from the Viking site and also ordering functions seemed to work, well, less well.

Meanwhile, on Fatwallet, ekote was flamed, slandered, called an idiot and other derogatory names sometimes even in CAPITAL LETTERS. Other FW members who hadn't yet hit the order button were angry, and soon it seemed that everybody was chiming in on the anti-ekote bandwagon. These people were apparently enraged, to the point of capital letters and boldface type, that somebody had called attention to a pricing mistake, and they didn't get in on a cheap DVD player. Well, boo hoo. As if there aren't more important things to worry about this morning than a DVD player that they shouldn't have been able to get anyway.

It's not like there won't be several $25 dollar DVD players on sale this coming Black Friday.

They're not the only ones whining this morning, though. There seem to be a great many people utterly shell-shocked that Bush so far has received more votes than Kerry. How, they ask incredulously, could this be? Surely nobody could be so stupid or close-minded, let alone so many people! Kerry apparently conceded earlier today, so it would seem that the election is over and we have four more years to endure.

Before I continue, please don't get all offended at me too much. This is a rant that started bouncing around my mind last night as I read postings and articles written as the results were being tallied. The people to whom I aim these sharp-tongued remarks are the knee-jerk whiners, finger pointers, and elitists that I saw on the boards, not anybody I know or would hope to meet in person.

Much like the angry Fatwallet members mentioned above.

So...

Bush won. More people voted for him. Yes, there were record numbers of voters. Yes, there were record numbers of new voters. Not all of the new voters were voting for Kerry!

A lot of hullabaloo was made of the polling results of all the different pollsters and issues of cell phones and so on and so forth. Punditry on both sides abounded and I'm sure that the Pro-Bush pundits are sitting back victoriously and the more adamant Pro-Kerry pundits are still in shock (some had predicted as much as 2/3 the vote for Kerry or more).

Well you know what? Polls don't count and punditry doesn't solve much other than satisfy the desires of those who like to hear or read the pundits pund (or whatever verb they do). The only thing that counts in an election is a vote.

Thank you to all the voters on both sides. Though some of you faced adversity you still stuck to it and voted, even if a great many of you voted for people and issues that I do not like. Some numbers show some hundred and fifteen million voters this time around, over half of which weren't interested in changing horses mid stream. Thanks, but...

Shame on you all.

Shame on you complacent voters willing to buckle under for four more years of bad stuff. Shame on you for giving the man who reversed our nation's financial standing a mandate to keep up the good work. Shame on you for falling for scare tactics and selective interpretation of an ancient text.

Shame on you voters who weren't complacent. You were mad as hell and you weren't going to take it anymore! Except that when you were telling people this you were talking to the wrong people. As more polls rolled in too many people were patting each other on the back or calling already-harassed voters in Ohio and Florida and not doing all you could to get the voters to see the way.

Shame on you for giving up on Oklahoma, and Kentucky, and the Dakotas, and wherever else was Red or Blue or Purple or whatever. As you can see, nothing was set in stone this time around. Just because the candidates and the pundits wrote off the states doesn't mean you should have.

Of course, I didn't call any Oklahomans either. I bet neither did P. Diddy or Mary J. Blige, each of whom left me more than one (pre-recorded) message. All in all I probably had some thirty phone calls in the last few months encouraging me to get out and vote.

That's probably more than for the entire state of Montana.

Guess what? I don't even like the guy I voted for all that much, because in truth I didn't even vote for him. I voted against the other guy (and his largely irrelevant other opponents like the Libertarian Badnarik). Every time I've voted in a presidential race it has been against somebody and not for the other. So shame on me, too, I guess, for not supporting "my guy" as best I could.

Well, shame on them too, for giving me two pretty similar people to pick between. Shame on the system for not letting me vote Green or Libertarian or for the Robot Labor party if I wanted to do so. Shame on everybody who narrowed this election to a matter of fear of terror (boy, don't you feel safe out there in Nebraska now?) or protection of marriage.

Protection of marriage? What needs to be protected? My mom the schoolteacher has some twenty five students and she's having more than thirty parent-teacher conferences on their behalf. You see, they're not seeing the separated/estranged mothers and fathers together since some of them cannot be civil even for something like this. Others even have restraining orders to keep them apart.

This is what you have protected, America. Good job. While our civil rights have diminished and our jobs dried up and our billionaires have gotten richer, you've protected marriage. Whoop de doo. When the Supreme Court gets packed with people who think just like you, it's just a matter of time before the Puritans' visions for this country finally come to fruition (maybe. God I hope not).

Again, I'm sorry if this offends anybody I know personally, but I stand behind what I say. To all you whiners, there's a whole world out there that isn't in front of your computer screens. These Bush voters weren't plotting their mass voting on the internet, or on MSNBC. They weren't having meetups and flash mobs and dissecting fonts of documents. They were spreading the onus to vote at dinner tables and at meetings in person, often even in churches and town halls.

Hell, a lot of these people were the ones renting out theaters to show congregations The Passion. I don't recall ever getting an evite for that, do you?

To you, those hardcore Bush voters strong on the hot-button issues, good luck. You've got an awful lot of people mad at you, and they think they're smarter than you too. Be cool, and maybe we can all work together and get along the same way everybody did standing in line together.

So yeah, the country's backsliding and we're probably not going to be looked fondly upon by the world community for another four years. Here's hoping Bush can't do too much more damage that the next guy can't fix.

Or gal, for that matter. As long as that gal isn't Hillary.

Four more years. Four more years, folks, is how long you have to come up with a better, newer candidate. He or she won't be running against Bush (and likely not Cheney either) but it could be tough to get rid of all residue of Republicanism from the White House without a damn strong alternative.

So Ralph Nader, start working. You've got four whole years to campaign now, ha ha ha .

Go ahead a laugh now. Don't be surprised when things seem a lot more grim.

Well, I went and voted today. I left a half hour early or so, figuring it wouldn't take too long to take care of my business and be off to work.

I couldn't have been more wrong. When I walked in the door I saw a lengthy line. I continued to follow it down the corridor of the school, around a corner and down another hallway. It took me over two hours of standing in line to get to the booth and take my two minutes to vote. I'd meant to bring my Palm, and I could have walked home some four times to get it while waiting.

Once we finally made it into the gym (with only an hour left, or so) there were a number of signs and postings. I saw how small my precinct was and read about the five-minute rule (it's an ordinance, though I forgot the number), looked at a sample ballot, and I looked at the posted list of all registered voters in my precinct. There were 956, two of which were marked as absentees. After checking that I was among them I did some mental math.

Fortunately I had an hour to work it out. I'm slow in the mornings when I haven't eaten my chocolate milk and bagel.

There were three voting machines and just about nine hundred and sixty voters. Assuming that they kept people to a strict five minutes (some were taking longer, very few were taking less time than that) that works out to over twenty-five hours of voting.

Last I checked the polls were only open about twelve or thirteen hours. What will happen to those other people? More than a few had seen the beginning of the line and left impatiently. Stories circulated through the line about a woman who sold her spot (having arrived before 7am) for five bucks.

As I was getting ready to vote I heard one of the volunteers calling headquarters to try to get at least one more machine. I can only hope they have them to spare, though I can but wonder how anyone could expect so many voters to use so few machines.

To any Americans not yet at the polls, I recommend Vote Smart as a relatively unbiased and informative source to find out more about the candidates. I was able to look at voting records and detailed questionnaires from many of the potential representatives and it helped my choices immensely.

Today was Monday, November 01 and I began my novel bright and early at the stroke of midnight. It was a promising start, even despite my lack of a whole plot (so far) and some other minor details (motive, etc.) but I don't doubt that I can't finish this novel. Or, as I would say, I do not doubt that I cannot finish this novel.