Super-Duper Tuesday!

HAPPY SUPER TUESDAY!!!

How excited am I about voting today? So excited that I made Adam wake me up early so we could go vote before he went to work.

I KNOW. Seriously ridiculous. Why am I so crazy? Am I going to end up all jaded and cynical when I’m old? Is this blog in thirty years going to be like, “oooorgh, I have to vote today! worst day ever! these young whippersnappers have no idea what’s good for them! back in my day, we had to leave the house to vote! and wear pants! none of this new-fangled online voting! Voters in my day had stamina and courage! and pants!”

But that way I also figured I could post early about voting, before the results come in, so that I don’t have to write either (a) an obnoxious post if my candidate wins or (b) a depressed post if my candidate doesn’t do as well as I’m hoping. Because I don’t want to go on and on here about who I’m voting for (although you might be able to guess, given that I’m under 30 and a bit of an optimist/hopemonger myself). 🙂

The important part is to vote if you can, and the exciting part is that for once it can actually make a difference -– nobody can be like, well, it’s obvious how Massachusetts is going to go, so why bother? Because nobody knows! Anything could happen! SO EXCITING!

I must say, no offense to Massachusetts, but the election staff did not look as pleased to see me as the New York staff used to. I was all, “VOTING! WOO!” and they were all, “Yeah.” And I kind of miss the wacky curtained booths with the levers and switches that make you wonder whether you’re voting or operating an old-fashioned railroad. Here we just filled in a bubble on a big sheet of paper (triple-checking to make sure I didn’t accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan), then hid it inside a secret-keeping confidentiality folder so NO ONE CAN SEE HOW YOU VOTED as you walk it over to the nifty machine.

Oh, yes, there is at least one nifty machine: You stick the top of your ballot into it, hold on to the bottom of your confidentiality folder, and then the machine sucks the ballot inside while you keep the folder, thus ensuring that no one at any point could possibly have seen how you voted, because that would be too too horrifying.

On the plus side, I do like seeing the piece of paper where my vote is marked, so I can be sure it’s really there in case of a recount or anything. But if it were up to me, the nifty machine would make a delighted DING DING DING! noise after it sucked up the ballot, just to express how thrilled it is about you voting. I mean, seriously.

So! My vote is in! Time to go lie around on the couch wondering why I’m up so early. Oooh, I know, I’ll watch Mansfield Park! That sounds productive.

Just a few links:

Awesome. And kind of a great song, too.

Hilarious John Hodgman from The Daily Show has a hilarious blog. Check out the June 2007 Archives where he talks about being on jury duty…too funny.

Also, what is this?:

The Writer-Editor Relationship

HA! It’s a TV SHOW? About writers and editors? With hilarious British accents?? WHY IS THIS NOT ON MY DVR ALREADY? Amazing.

Happy voting, everyone!

Edited to add: Upon further research, it turns out this show is not entirely about writers and editors, although it is entirely about hilarious British accents. Ah, well. Really, there should be a show like that, though. Maybe The Return of Jezebel James (premiering in March, rumor has it) will fill this enormous gap in our entertainment needs.

Also, Mansfield Park was adorable, although I think Fanny had fewer lines than almost anyone, my goodness. But I loved the part where everyone was literally yelling "HUZZAH! HUZZAH!" Why don’t we do that nowadays? Imagine how thrilling it would be to walk into a room and have everyone yell "HUZZAH! HUZZAH!" Or maybe that’s what the nifty machine could do…eat the ballot, ding ding ding, HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH for voting!

Quote of the Day:
President Bartlet: "Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?"
Leo McGarry: "Well, maybe they don’t and they can’t count either."
— The West Wing