This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
Today was Election Day; I voted mid-morning. The ballots had been changed again. This time there were large sheets of paper with arrows next to each choice on the ballot, or more precisely, arrowheads and arrow tails. We were given a ball-point pen to connect an arrowhead with an adjacent arrow tail, thus indicating our machine-readable choice. An election worker then fed the ballots through a scanner. This was a change from last year's high-tech touchscreen machines to a lower-tech paper system.
I eschew absentee voting, and always go to the polls. It is an act of political theater. I have no expectation that my vote will have any political impact on anything. Today I voted for myself (as a write-in candidate) for only three offices, a new record low. I even nominated myself for a City (or was it State's?) Attorney. The last thing on earth I want to be is a lawyer, but if drafted I will serve.
Be that as it may, I expect that most everyone will be soon be even more frustrated and unhappy than they were before this miserable election, for one reason or another. In international terms, the US has a major center-left and a major center-right party. A likely outcome is that the left will be outraged, the right will be outraged, taxes will go up (now, soon, or when the borrowing from many bond measures on the ballot falls due), Bush will still be president (short of assassination or sudden illness, that is a certainty), Bush-bashers will still be bashing and gnashing, Saddam will be well-groomed and dashing for the upcoming appeal of his death sentence, Sunni and Shia will still be clashing, French youth will be toasting Peugeots and Renaults, and Turkish secularists will be every bit as disgruntled as US Bible Belt fundamentalists. Only Satan could be completely happy with the outcome, but not the Great Satan and not the Israelis: the other Satan. You know, the red guy with the horns.
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