My Civic Duty, A National Accord

I'm trying to monetize my blog, so there's some Honda product placement for you.

Every time you click on this article, I'll get another 15,000 miles out of my car.

Hey, I don't know if you heard about this, but recently we had an election here in the United States. It received a TON of press coverage, but somehow they still missed... The Little Details.

• It's Monday. You have bills to pay and headshots to mail off. Who's there to help you out? -The Ladies of the Secret Post Office, that's who.
• There will never be a wall calendar called "Ladies of the Secret Post Office."
• They should, however, get a plaque or a medal or something. They are the best.
• It's not even Election Day and the Ladies of the Secret Post Office have already voted. Absentee ballot, baby! No standing in line!
• Go figure that the Ladies of the Secret Post Office would vote by mail.
• According to The Ladies, there's such a thing as "permanent absentee" status for voting.
• You can be a permanent absentee voter as long as you don't miss three elections in a row.
• Apparently, the best absentees have perfect attendance.
• If you lose your absentee status, do you become a presenter?
• My blog has officially become too clever for its own good.
• In other words, it's become clogged.
• What, you prefer 'blever'?
• The Ladies of the Secret Post Office suggest you show up at your polling place BRIGHT and EARLY. They've voted in California before. That's why they now vote by mail.
• According to the LA County Registrar, your polling place is "RESIDENCE - FRONT WORK ROOM".
• You suspect your polling place is, in fact, an abandoned sawmill. AND WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT TURNS OUT!
• Yet another reason to vote by mail.
• At 4am on Tuesday, it rains in Los Angeles. Fortunately it stops before daylight so the mayor does not have to declare a city-wide state of emergency.
• It does not prevent Los Angelinos from stumbling around in goggle-eyed wonderment at the wet pavement and odd geographical features known as "puddles."
• Usually you only see those at the car wash, so it's somewhat startling to encounter them outside of captivity.
• It's 7:20am and there's already a line outside the abandoned sawmill. Apparently the wolfman needs another cup of coffee.
• You'd like to cut the line and join your cute friend who now lives in Venice and forgot to change her registration but your Midwestern sense of fairness demands that you go stand at the back.
• It's unclear if you are a masochist, or just really, really addicted to delayed gratification.
• Unless you measure time on a geologic scale, it's not really 'delayed' now is it?
• Flow of your average conversation while waiting in line:
  • Minute 0-15: "Hehe, who brought the bagels!?"
  • Minute 16-30: "Is the line moving? I think it's moving. Didn't we just move a little bit? I think I saw someone coming out."
  • Minute 31-40: [Muttered grumbling about "lies the pollworker told us upon our arrival."]
  • Minute 41-45: "No, SERIOUSLY, someone should have brought bagels."
  • Minute 46: Lament aloud that you will be late for work.
  • Minute 47: Debate whether you should come back later.
  • Minute 48-54: Debate where you should go for breakfast since your morning is shot anyway.
  • Minute 55-60: Silently try to summon enough of your Jedi reserves to do the Darth Vader force choke on the obnoxious woman who keeps 1) counting the number of people in line ahead of you, 2) multiplying that number by some completely arbitrary 'voting pace', and 3) reporting a new, updated, invariably-pessimistic wait time.
  • Minute 61-70: Realize you have somehow reached the front of the line and should probably get a demonstration of how the voting machine works.
  • Minute 71: Finally introduce yourself to the young woman you've been standing in line with for the past hour.
  • Minute 72: Pollworker: "NEXT."
• That was like a mini-blog in itself.
• Despite the fact that you registered to vote when you got your driver's license updated, your name does not appear on any of the rolls.
• If your name does not appear on the rolls, the werewolves who run the abandoned sawmill make you go to the kiddie table and cast a provisional ballot.
• The process for casting a provisional ballot is presided over by a 70-year-old official named Mike, who looks less like a werewolf and more like the cover model for Model Railroad Enthusiast.
• Engineer Mike doesn't like the crappy felt-tip pen they gave you any more than you do. God bless him, he's a kindred spirit.
• Voting for county judges makes you feel like a fifth grader who's accidentally been given the SAT: you're in over your head, everything feels like a trick question, and in the end you pick the answer that sounds "prettiest."
• "Cynthia Loo" is prettier than "Thomas Rubinson" and "Lori-Ann Jones" is prettier than "Pat Connolly" but when it comes to Office 154, your absurdist streak will force you to vote for "Rocky Crabb."
• Sometimes you have the maturity of a fifth grader. Maybe that's why they wouldn't add you to the regular rolls.
• Your faith in the system will be shaken a bit when you hand your provisional ballot to the junior pollworker/werewolf, they put it in the box, get distracted by another voter, and then turn to you and say "Can I help you?"
• And you wonder why so many survivors seem to be escaping the abandoned saw mill? -Werewolf inbreeding.
• By the time you get done with all the provisional loop-de-loops, your cute friend from Venice is gone. In fact, at this point she's probably back in Venice.
• Fun fact: the Mesozoic era was followed by the Cenozoic and lasted approximately 180 million years.
• I think the presidential election would be a lot more commercially successful if they'd have Ryan Seacrest announce the winner live the next night. Also: vote by text message. That's a sure money-maker.
• Text messaging - a poll tax for old people.
• ABC News appears to be broadcasting their election results from the bridge of the starship Enterprise. You've got Charlie Gibson as Picard, "Jordi" Stephanopoulos, and Diane Sawyer making a surprise return as Lt. Tasha Yar. Let's hope she stays away from Armus the evil tar creature.
• Try to keep the flamewars civil if you're going to argue that Sawyer is actually a blond Counselor Troi and Gibson's better suited as a beardless Number 2.
• Surprisingly, none of the away teams in Grant Park or Times Square get attacked by a sentient lava monster or hoodwinked by Data's evil twin. It's a little disappointing, to be honest.
• Nerd factor... approaching... maximum... operational... capacity. Containment breach... imminent.
• At 7:59pm PST and 49 seconds, Charlie Gibson officiously declares that polls are still open on the West Coast, the electoral vote total is lacking, and ABC News is NOT ready to call it for Obama.
• Eleven seconds later, Charlie Gibson calls it for Obama.
• It looks like Charlie Gibson is willing to count your provisional ballot, even if you're not so sure the werewolves will.
• Your guy won! As a reward, you get a bowl of homemade peppermint chocolate chip ice cream.
• And four years of respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.
• That's what you're hoping, anyhow.

-Tom, who had to score at least one political point in this blog. Did you expect anything less?