Are you like me? Do you sit around on election day, wishing that you could be a part of the Democratic process, but woefully ignorant about the candidates and their stands on the various issues?

I'm like that every November and every May. But it doesn't stop me from voting. I have a system, see. And I'll reveal it here for the first time.

Just think of some asshole you know. Everybody knows at least one, right? Every family has at least one. Every group of friends has at least one. And most workgroups have dozens.

Now, think about who your favorite asshole would vote for. I've found that it's usually pretty easy. Maybe they've bombarded you with their political views for as long as you've known them. That's how I picked my asshole.

Ewww, that sounded gross.

That's how I chose my asshole.

Okay, that's better.

Then today, all I had to do was go vote the exact opposite of everything my asshole would vote for.

I cancelled out the fucker's votes.

And, to me, the fact that I totally negated that asshole's participation - well it's just fucking hilarious to me. I mean, he lives and breathes politics, and all I do is drink beer and shoot pool. But I, with 30 minutes of effort - including drive and standing in line time - was able to pretty much wipe out his reason for existing in the first place.

So, don't waste another election day. Do something useful. Make a difference. Find yourself an asshole and render him irrelevant.

If you don't know any assholes, I've got news for you. You're probably the asshole.

(response to message)

I think Raindrop was Honeybee's Mom or vice-versa

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that Honeybee was Sergeant's (and Chief's) mom, and that Raindrop was a Pekinese.

I've been wrong before though.

The creative kind.

My creativity, or whatever it is that I use in its place, has been so limited lately. I should really try to pace myself. So I can get at least one decent journal entry every day.

Easier said than done, I suppose. Like a lot of things.

Like today, I wrote this in an email to my friend RockGirl:

I don't know if it ever really dies. I thought my hope was dead when I found out about [some fucked up shit this past Spring]. It didn't really die though. It just went to sleep. Every now and then its snoring wakes me up from this complacency I've been in.

I think the metaphor of hope as a slumbering beast is a good one. I should have saved it for a journal entry.

Anyway, I've been sick for a few days. Nothing major as it turns out. Just a bit of a fever. I missed a couple of days of work, but that was mostly because I didn't want to infect everyone there. If I'd had the plague, as I'd originally feared, and I'd infected someone at work and they'd subsequently died - well I could kiss my annual performance bonus goodbye.

A while ago I was at SassyGirl's going away party, and at one point I found myself out on her deck with a bunch of kids. Teenagers mostly, though a couple of them might have been in their early 20s.

I found myself all alone with these kids because everyone else, everyone I knew and might have had at least one single solitary thing in common with, they had all taken off to pull some chick's car out of a ditch or something.

I don't remember what we were originally talking about. Probably something stupid. But at one point some of the kids started rambling on and on and on about their various thoughts about love. Such as they were.

Each time one of them would finish making a statement that they thought was profound, all of the kids would look at me. I guess because I was twice as old as any of them, they had subconsciously chosen me as some kind of spiritual leader. Their love coach, if you will.

I think I spent most of the time rolling my eyes.

Kids are so stupid.

Or maybe naive is a better word. Yes, I think it is.

Kids are so fucking naive.

With their fucking hopes and their dreams and their stupid ideals, it's really a wonder that they've managed to live for as long as they have. I mean, most of them seem to think that they can fly. It's truly miraculous that the ground isn't littered with broken bodies.*

I think back to when I was that age. No way was I that fucking stupid. By the time I'd graduated high school, life had already been feeding me shit sandwiches for years. By the time my marriage had ended, I'd learned to enjoy the damn things. By the time LaptopGirl moved away, I craved them like they were manna from Heaven.

But those kids, those kids on that deck that night, there was not a single one of them possessed of a single clue about what love is all about.

Like I said, I spent most of that time on that deck just rolling my eyes. But at one point I did speak up. At one point the drivel being vomited out of a young mouth was just too much to take. At one point I saw the opportunity to say something worthwhile. I took that opportunity. All eyes were upon me. I'd been drinking. One of the girls was hot so I wanted to seem especially wise.

There are very few truly evil people in the world, I said. And, chances are, none of us have ever met any of them, or dated them, or given our virginity to them. But we're still fooled into seeing evil where it doesn't exist. This is a defense mechanism, invented by our hearts and backed-up by our brains. By demonizing those who have hurt us, we further isolate ourselves from the cold harsh reality of life. The reality that we will be hurt, time and time again. By good people. By people who are just like us. When we slap an "evil" label on someone who's hurt us, we fool ourselves into believing that it was a rare event. An anomaly. That it won't happen again, or at least not with the same intensity.

It's still better than the alternative.

* - If you took those last two sentences literally, then you are an idiot and you should go kill yourself now before you pass on your idiot genes to the next generation. If you've already managed to find someone as stupid as you to procreate with then you should probably kill your offspring first.

Bands that I never heard of that had a free concert in Louisville tonight
Blue October

People that I don't like
That one bitch that called MixedSignalGirl a cow and tonight poured me the wrong beer or maybe she poured the right beer but she peed in it

People that are nice
That chick from Evansville that I talked to tonight

People that confuse me
All those Irish guys that drank nothing but Bud Light all night and one of them stole my glasses for a while

People that do not freak out
HatGirl

People that freak out
Every other woman on Earth besides HatGirl

Food that is good
The Curry Fries that The Pub sells

Girls with horrible taste in ex-husbands
That one chick that was married to my cousin once

Cute girls
That blonde bartender at Rich O's

Girls with cool hair
That one bartender at Hard Rock in Louisville

None of these lists are meant to be all-inclusive.

Sometimes, the thoughts come as if from nowhere. As if they just materialize out of thin air.

But that's not where they really come from.

I've written about that night, back when I couldn't control myself enough to stop my words from flowing out my fingers onto my screen and out into the world. I've written about what a good person I was. What a good friend I was. I've written about how I wondered what might have happened. If I'd been less of a good person, less of a good friend. If I'd been like most guys, on that night so long ago.

Sometimes, the thoughts come unbidden. And they refuse to go away.

Everything I did that night was wrong. Or, more accurately, everything I didn't do that night was wrong. When I pretended to be noble, told myself that I was doing the right thing, what I was really doing was cowering in fear. I patted myself on the back for being so selfless, but I'd done the most selfish thing imaginable.

Sometimes, the thoughts get stuck in my head. And I dream the thoughts, and I rip myself away from my dream, and the thoughts are still there.

Even when I wrote about that night, even then I was being selfish. Weighing the alternate possibilities and judging their merits based on would I be better off if, just if, I'd reacted differently.

I wrote about how I might know the answers to some of the questions that had been plaguing me. I wrote about how I could have traded certain and predictable pain for months and years of random anguish.

How could I have known? I asked myself. I was just doing what I thought was right.

Sometimes, the thoughts take me back to a place and a time. Sometimes, they leave me there to find my own way out. If I can.

I should have done something.

I should have brushed the hair from her eyes, and let my fingers linger just a bit longer than necessary against her face.

I should have looked into her eyes, and asked her in my softest voice if she was okay.

I should have pulled her to me, and told her how special and pretty she was.

I should have kissed her, and let her dictate what happened next.

I should have done all of those things. But not because I was a bad person. Not because I was a bad friend. And not even because it was what the world expected of me.

I should have done all those things because she expected it.

And I let her down.

She needed to feel special and pretty, on that night so long ago, and I let her down.

Sometimes, the thoughts abandon me in the dark, to force me to see the light.

That night was never about me. It was never about us.

It was about her.

And I didn't realize that until just a couple of nights ago.

It was about her.

And I let her down because I thought it was about something bigger and more important. On that night, in that place, the only thing that mattered was her.

And I let her down.

This is not another what if entry. This is not another entry about how I wish I'd done things differently. I've written enough of those to last a lifetime.

This is an apology.

I don't know if she will ever read this. I like to think that she will, someday when she's bored and maybe feeling a little nostalgic.

There are a lot of things that I've wanted to apologize to her for. Most of them will fade with the passing of time and the resumption of separate lives, but not this one. This one will remain. Because this one was, as far as I can tell, this one was the first time.

I let her down.

And I'm sorry.

My grandmother used to have this little Pekinese dog. She had several of them over the years, actually. I don't know what this one particular dog's name was. It might have been Raindrop. I know there was a Raindrop at some point during my childhood.

One thing about this dog was that it was ugly. But that should go without saying. All Pekinese dogs are ugly with their squashed faces and their stubby legs and their weird compact torsos. Selective breeding gone horribly awry.

Another thing about this one particular dog was that it was terrified of storms. But not petrified. Whatever the opposite of petrified would be. Maybe frantic with fear.

Whenever thunder would rumble, this dog would start running. My grandmother's house was a big circle. The dog would run from the kitchen to the laundry room to the bedroom to the foyer to the living room to the kitchen - on and on and on until the thunder stopped. That dog, with it ugly little tongue hanging out of its ugly face, that dog would run that circuit nonstop until the storm had passed.

Unless somebody messed up and opened the kitchen door.

When that happened, somebody - usually me - would have to go out into the storm and chase the stupid little thing down.

It was amazing how fast those stubby little legs could propel that dog.

---

This past weekend I went driving. A lot. And I thought about that dog and how it would run and run without ever getting anywhere. How it would run for the simple reason that it was too terrified to stay where it was.

I wondered if I was doing the same thing. And not just with the driving around. With all of my traveling, and with all of my life, I wondered if what I was really doing was running.

Maybe.

And if I am, then that begs the question of whether I'm running from something that I cannot escape, or running toward a destination that I cannot see.

How badly am I fooling myself?

Am I as stupid as that ugly little dog, running simply because it's the only thing I can do?

Apparently, anyway.

Part of the problem is that the things that are funniest to me, they're funny only from my perspective.

For example, probably the most hilarious thing ever in this journal was something that I didn't write, back in early August. See, it was the omission that was funny. Like if I won the lottery or something, and then decided to never mention it. Not out of privacy concerns, but just because to neglect mention of such a life-changing event is, well like I said, funny to me.

Then I had to go and ruin the joke, a couple of weeks ago, by rambling on and on about that same topic which I'd so carefully avoided for over two months.

Oh well.

Another problem is that, when I try to write something funny, it never works out for me in the long run. I mean, I can go back and read the entries that were supposed to be funny, and I barely crack a smile most of the time. So attempting to write anything funny is never self-reinforcing.

But some of the stuff I write is, apparently, funny to other people. I get compliments on some stuff. I get told how I made someone's day. Shit like that. I usually just say thanks and dismiss those people as humor-impaired because the stuff they're chuckling over or maybe even wetting their pants over just isn't that funny. And it never was, except when it was still being brewed inside in my head.

I was going somewhere with this entry. I have no idea where.

Yesterday, I went driving.

First, I went to get my oil changed in my truck.

Then I went out to my sister's house to see her new kitten.

Then I hit the road.

After about six hours of driving, I ended up in downtown Louisville. A mere five miles from my home. I obviously took the scenic route.

So at a little after 7:00 I was sitting in this place called The Dark Star and I was eating a yummy cheeseburger and drinking a yummy BBC Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout (314), and the cast of all the Batman movies walked in.

There was Batman, and Catwoman, and The Joker, and Two-Face, and some harlequin chick that I guess was one of the Joker's henchmen.

Catwoman and the harlequin chick were hot. All of the costumes were great.

After I'd finished my meal and my beer I walked up the street to The Pub and had a couple of Newcastles (2626) and I wrote down all of the costumes that I saw. You should be aware that some of these might not have been actual costumes. Those characters marked with an * are the ones that might have been real:

• The Blues Brothers


• Pirate


• Stupid Hairstyle Guy *


• Active Herpes Outbreak Girl *


• Joe Dirt


• Kermit (or, Green Tights Dude with Frog-Shaped Tumor On His Head)


• Terrorist (had a bomb in his turban, how original)


• Hot Rasta Girl


• Security Guard *


• Prostitute *


• Fireman


• Hot Pirate Girl


• Fat Bumblebee Girl


• Assorted Zombies


• Living Crocodile Hunter


• Dead Crocodile Hunter


• Nacho Libre


• Assorted Faeries


• Stick Up Her Ass Girl *


• Cute Devil Girl (my waitress)


• Rambette (like Rambo but a girl)


• Green Dude In A Suit (maybe an alien?)


• Vampire Couple


• World's Gayest Guy *


• Assorted Sexy Nurses


• World's Ugliest Cheerleader


• Goth Girl


• Orange Pants Faggot *


• Joe Dirt (another one)


• Fatass Ex-Jock Guy *


• Assorted Evil Clowns


• Assorted Non-Evil Clowns


• Striped Shirt Girl


• Skinhead Punks *


• Gay Black Uncle Sam (his description)


• Really Tall Skull Dude


• Little Miss Muffet


• Bloody Surgeon


• Hot Navy Girl


• Hot Army Girl


• Hot Burkha Girl


• Assorted Cute Princesses

At 10:00 or so, my phone vibrated.

HatGirl!

Yay!

They were at Rich O's.

So I went there. Out on the street there were a gazillion more people in costumes, but I didn't stop to write any of them down or I'd still be writing.

Oh yeah, I'd talked to this one zombie at The Pub and he gave me a beer shirt and a free glass to give to HatGirl. I had to lie and say that they were for my girlfriend, but the sheer joy in HatGirl's eyes when I gave her those gifts - well it was certainly worth a little fib.

When I got to Rich O's I got to sit on the throne because TallLady had just left. I knew this because I'd talked to her in the parking lot. There were some girls I didn't recognize scattered around the living room. They might have been cute but I wouldn't know because HatGirl was at the kiddie table.

Yay!

I had myself a Diet Coke and talked to HatGirl and LuckyFucker for a while. I got NotHideousGirl's phone number from HatGirl, but it might have been a fake number because I sent a test text message and I've recieved no response.

Then after HatGirl and LuckyFucker left I talked to WomanRepellant for a while.

Then I came home.