I woke up this morning to the booming sounds of Lee Greenwood, courtesy of my roommate Garrett Graff. In my pre-coffee, heavily-headached, angry sleep-deprived state I growled at him — “what the hell is going on?” and he cheerily informed me this was his election day “pump up mix”.
I sat down at my beloved Powerbook for the most up-to-date news. Today, after all, is the culmination of a long journey that began in March of 2003 when I first stumbled onto a fellow named Howard Dean. I’ll be following the election day happenings through the blogs — my favorite right now being Jerome’s MyDD, for “my due diligence”. But I’ll also be following the election results through an amazing machine built by my beloved EchoDitto: the DCCC Resultron.
My first email of the morning was from Mike Carvalho who pointed out this Yahoo News story about BLOOD SUCKING MONKEYS ATTACKING HUMAN BEINGS. I kid you not. Just another reason why I hate monkeys.
Oh geez. The obnoxious strains of the greatest hits of John Philip Souza are now wafting in from Garrett’s room. It’s too early for this pre-coffee, even on election day. I think I’m going to shoot myself.
As If It Matters 
November 2, 2004 at 11:16 am
So my mom is the head of my hometown’s precinct. I got there at 7.15 to vote and it took about an hour.
Mom was wearing a lovely new red shirt. It’s comfortable, it’s a good color for her complexion and grey hair, and I imagine she connected it with being patriotic, having grown up in WWII on army bases.
But I’m standing in line for an hour, and watching her up there, and thinking, does she know as an election official that by wearing red, she could be signalling her registered-Republicanism? Is she subtly influencing people?
What the heck? It’s just my mom’s friggin’ wardrobe! She wears patriotic colors every vaguely patriotic day that’s out there.
How did the colors of supporting our country, three different colors, diverse and together, separate to become signs of division and party strife? Why does wearing one of them mean you are one kind of pure partisan, and another color, the other kind? It’s de-unifying.
And what are they supposed to conjure? Is red for courage and blue for fear? Does blue reach toward the cleaner sky? Is red the flames of a burning city with foreign blood?
Today I’m wearing white.
November 2, 2004 at 11:18 am
And black.
November 3, 2004 at 12:08 pm
oh man, garrett — an election day pump-up mix! can you please upload to itunes immediately. and maybe relabel it as the “post-election day pump up mix”