March 2008

The Caucus

Doc and I just got done “caucusing.” Get your mind out of the gutter! It may SOUND dirty, and we may have made a lot of innuendo jokes about it, but caucusing is actually just a very strange part of our very strange political system. Apparently in Texas, you get to vote in the primary election, and then you get to vote AGAIN at the caucus the same night. The primary selects 2/3 of the delegates, and the results from the caucus select the remaining third. So not only did we early vote in the primaries last week, we showed up for the caucus tonight. We had no idea what to expect, but since the Obama people have called us about a dozen times over the past two weeks urging us to show up and vote, we decided to go and see what it was all about. We walked about 3/4 of a mile to the elementary school in our neighborhood, and stood in a very long line of people waiting outside the doors. After the last voter had voted in the primary around 7:30, they let everyone in and we split up by precinct to stand in new very long lines. Eventually we got to the sign-up sheet and cast our votes for Obama. We weren’t sure what to do after that, but a lot of people seemed to be sitting in chairs lining a long hallway filled with lockers and childrens’ drawings, so we sat down and chatted with the people around us for a while. Brittney called Doc while we were waiting and said that she was still in line in her precinct, with about 100 people ahead of her! It seems like crazy numbers of people are turning up for the elections this year. About an […]

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R.I.P. Gary Gygax

The word around the internets is that Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away this morning. I spent much of my teenage years happily immersed in D&D. I can’t tell you how many nights Sarah and Kim and Molly and I stayed up until dawn, working our way through Ravenloft or Greyhawk or hack’n’slash-ing through the Tomb of Horrors, drinking Coke and eating M&Ms until we were sick, then crashing in our sleeping bags on the living room floor and sleeping till midafternoon. Good times, good times. I still have all my dragon dice. I keep them in my desk drawer. For some reason I’ve never been able to simply store them away in the attic with my other souvenirs of childhood.

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Misguided

Overheard this morning in the office, spoken by an otherwise smart and talented 20 year old: “It’s not fair. People who have higher incomes obviously worked harder for that money, so why should they be taxed at a higher rate? It’s just not fair.” Spoken like one who has only known those higher income levels. Let’s go talk to some minimum wage factory workers and tell them that they’re simply not working very hard. Also: “Someone who works three jobs and earns the same income as someone who just works 9 to 5 is taxed at the same rate. That’s not fair.” Honey, someone who works three jobs is probably doing it to simply make ends meet and not earning enough to even be taxed in the first place. This is the same woman who informed us that, although she is a Republican, she was going to vote in the Democratic primary, for Hillary Clinton, so that Barack Obama wouldn’t win the nomination, thus giving John McCain an easier win in the national election. And you know what, it’s not even 10 a.m. on a Monday morning. It’s too early for this crap.

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