The Silly Season

As we approach D-Day, zero hour—election day, it is clear that we are in the silly season. We are being bombarded by commercials claiming and counter-claiming, getting dirtier and dirtier every day. If your opponent accuses you of something , even in the final hours, you come out with a counterattack. Whether or not these crazy commercials will affect the outcome on Tuesday remains to be seen. We do know that they are insulting our intelligence and annoying us to no end.

Examples of the latest weirdness:
- a “retired” police investigator (who looks to be about 35 years old, says she bought drugs from a candidate’s staffer. Said staff member was not fired, but instead promoted.

- Wife of one candidate came on to say shame on the other guy who was persecuting her husband.

- Rudy Giuliani, who is apparently “America’s Mayor”, came out in support of this positively dangerous gubernatorial candidate.

Apparently, every candidate has either voted for tax breaks or for tax increases; punished the little guys or rewarded the fat cats; will personally seek out and destroy the baddies or surrender the country to the terrorists.

Candidates have been accused of:
- bribery
- being soft on terrorism
- defaulting on government loans
- taking money from lobbyists and then voting for the lobbyists programs (gasp!)

Our issues include constitutional amendments to raise minimum wage, allow slot machines in the state and ban smoking in public areas. I think a constitutional amendment is an awfully big sledge hammer to bring to the party, since such things are harder to change than regular old laws. A constitution is supposed to be a set of principles, not specific bits of programs that should rather be legislated.

I plan to vote against the slot machines and against the smoking dealie, but the minimum wage ploy bothers me. I favor raising the minimum wage, but darn it, a full fledged amendment—I’m not sure that’s the way to do it.

It will be nice to get back to erectile dysfunction, depression, sleep disorders, energy saving home improvements, money saving car insurance, and all those other things that we are supposed to care about.
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In other news, I blew out my knee this week. On Monday, my left leg was cramped such that I couldn’t straighten it. After walking around on it like that for two days, I literally couldn’t walk on Wednesday, and wound up missing two days of work: one because I was really in bad shape, and another because Kathy made me stay home, though I felt well enough to go. Will I rest this weekend? Probably not. Gotta see the ortho guy soon to see what, if anything, he wants to do.

Oh-I ordered a new cabinet to hold my CD’s and such, and I’d like to put it together this weekend. Haven’t even opened the boxes yet. It’s got doors on both sides and sits on a spinner. It’s oak veneer and about five feet tall. Holds 500 CD’s and tons of DVD’s and videotapes. Two hundred dollars online, so it better be good. Kathy approved this purchase, in case you were thinking I went crazy on my own.