oh, the stigma!

Me to Eric (my co-worker): "Hey, I'll be back soon, I need to run out to Woodbury [an outer-ring suburb] -- otherwise known as the Mini-van Capital of the World..."

Eric (putting his head down on his desk): "Argghhh! Don't mention that word. [His otherwise wonderful wife] Mary wants us to get a mini-van!"

Me: "Eric! No!! Resist! Be strong!"

But she's wearing the poor guy down! Their daughter Elsie just turned a year old, and now there's another kid on the way. So how does he fight this? How does he go from being a cool dude to being a mini-van owner?

Plus, have you ever seen worse drivers than mini-van drivers? I once had a bumper sticker that said "Mini-vans Are Tangible Evidence of Evil." It's not easy to go from people to go from driving a Toyota Corolla to one of these monstrosities. How can you even see out the back window? And how many parking spaces do they have to take up? Oh, don't get me started on that.

*****

And then there is my poor distraught sister Joan!

She lives in downtown St. Paul, just a few blocks from the site of the Republican National Convention, due to open in about a month.

They were asking for 10,000 local volunteers to meet and greet and otherwise assist the Republican delegates. At one point, they were even begging for volunteers because hardly anybody had signed up. So Joan volunteered. Very nice of her, right?...

But she hadn't heard anything from these dweebs, so she called today and was told that her application was not accepted! She had flunked the security clearance!? The poor thing is absolutely crushed. I mean, it's one thing to bear the social stigma of assisting the Republicans. It's a whole different matter to be a volunteer reject!

Did her donations to Hillary Clinton doom her??

And will she join me in the protest groups instead??

Will Eric become a Stepford Husband??

stay tuned for the answers! !

:-)

P.S. My second-favorite bumper sticker: "What would Scooby Doo?"...

something's gotta give

I thought I handled my busy season so well this year, but the stress must have been silently building in me. That suppressed stress was followed by a death in the family and trips across the continent. It all caught up with me, and my body has started acting its age. I've seen more doctors in the last week and a half, both in Hawaii and back here in Minnesota, than I generally would see in a year and a half. There is nothing I hate more than seeing doctors and taking medication and being reminded of mortality.

Oh well, I'll be fine, one way or the other, although my flesh, after all these years, might be meeting a scapel. I was planning on flying down to North Carolina to spend a long weekend with my sister, but that had to be postponed. I guess I need to slow down a little. Jerry is taking good care of me, as always.

Change of subject. I've hardly watched any television since February, and I turn on the news now and they are still over-reporting this silly Presidential election! It looks like I somehow have to get excited about Barack Obama, if I can, because, after all, have you ever seen a more lame candidate than John McCain? I do think Obama should offer the VP slot to Hillary, but I bet he won't. Somehow he needs to figure out how to win the big states. In the primaries, he has done great in states that he has no chance of winning in November. Plus, he needs somebody to show him how to be President, if he somehow wins!

SuperTuesday burn-out

OK, I hate to be back to this, but I went to my caucus the other night, and it's still on my mind, and I need to think about other stuff. Isn't this whole Presidential race (which started way too early, as everyone knows) getting eerily similar to American Idol? I mean, think about it. The only thing missing from those endless debates was Paula Abdul as moderator. It's a popularity contest-- it's not about issues, ideas. Who is electable? Someone we like. Should we add a talent contest and swim-suit competition?

Hillary, Barack -- I'll vote for either of course, but Barack's "rock star" status (which doesn't last long in this country) makes me nervous. McCain is scary, but it freaks me out that the media love him, and the media shape the election. Shake me, wake me when it's over.

and my next post will not be about either politics or football. or the weather. or what i had for lunch.

rollerskating with Hillary Clinton

last night, doing some desperate channel-surfing, I landed on one of those presidential-candidate debates, this time Republicans. These are really painful to watch, but, even though I will end up voting for whoever the Democratic nominee is, somehow the Republican debates are easier to watch. When they screw up or make total fools of themselves or call each other names, I'm kind of happy. When the Democrats debate, all I can do is cringe, because I have to vote for one of those stiffs.

I don't know why anybody would run for President these days. Who but a fool would go through the humiliating process? I mean, it's kind of amusing to watch Rudy Giuliani pretend to be religious or any of these Republicans pretend to care about public education, but how refreshing would it be to see real debate, to have these candidates say what they really think? And the media outlets are disgusting in their coverage of all the wrong non-issues! I must admit, though, as I look up at that line-up of even these Republican candidates, that any one of them seems to least have a brain, unlike the current holder of the post. I don't have the patience for this campaign and wish we could ignore it, but I do look forward to that magical date: January 20, 2009, when somebody else moves into the White House.

Tom, my son, prides himself on being non-political, but the other night he had a dream that we all went rollerskating with Hillary Clinton. My question, of course: was she wearing one of those hideous pantsuits? Can she possibly look all that bad in a dress?

Hillary isn't so bad. I could vote for her. The main issue I, like many of my fellow Democrats, have with her is that she voted for the Iraq war and until recently still supported the idea of that war. Other people that I know, people who would normally vote for a Democrat, say they wouldn't ever vote for Hillary because of the possible "dynasty effect" -- a potential 28 years of 2 families in power: Bush, Clinton, bush, Clinton.

but then there's Barack Obama, who has the limpest handshake of any man that I've ever shaken hands with. Doesn't a handshake say something about a person?

Or John Edwards, with that annoying accent?

What is remarkable is how all these candidates are making non-candidate Al Gore look so good. I of course am thinking that maybe he wouldn't look so good if he were standing up there at the debate podiums next to all these other chumps. Still, if he were running, I think he would be my guy.