If you are an undecided voter and are reading this I hate you and pray for a pox upon your house.

I know, not very clothmotherly of me, is it? Well, hell. Here is the situation.

1. Back in Japan (yes, I just turned around and came right back). We had a little electrical storm upon arrival in Osaka last night (only a week after living through the last and worst typhoon [so far] and missing by mere inches a cataclysmic quake outside Osaka). I'm fairly convinced that lightning hit the plane as we were vectoring in. We landed with much difficulty and sweaty palms. I'm battling a head cold that is rapidly transmogrifying into a sinus infection. My colleagues at the pharmaceutical company here told me that they could get me an appointment with a doctor if needed (and then one on the sly said if I need some antibiotics he could get them for me...yes, this is why your drugs are so expensive). I missed Halloween with V and with Nicholas and I'm sorely miffed at that as well.
2. Things could have gone better tonight, what with all the preparation we put into the research here. Too much heat (it's 70+ outside right now) and too little sleep and poor success = crabby me.
3. Did I mention the jetlag? Did I need to?

So to top it all off, I am watching the BBC coverage of the elections. They sent a correspondent to key swing states to talk to voters, both decided and undecided. As this earnest-seeming fellow began polling the undecideds, I could feel the bile rising. The more I listened to these simpering half-wits parade their indecision like a badge of honor the more frustrated I became. Here is why these people need to be corraled into dumpsters and pitched into the ocean, screaming, from a great height:

There are only three ways to interpret indecision at this time in the campaign (hell, the same was true a month ago) (and here he goes with another numbered list for some reason) ( and a second colon where one would have sufficed):

1. You are lazy.
2. You are too stupid to draw another breath.
3. You are a superstitious nutbag and/or a clown like Dubya who lives in the "realm of the gut" instead of the "realm of facts."
   
4. You are a contemptible attention whore who should be dragged bodily from your home, slathered in honey and pitched naked atop a nest of agitated fire ants. That will get you some notice too.
   

Let me elaborate. Points one and two share considerable overlap. If you cannot draw strong comparisons between the major party candidates, ones in which issues of personal gain and the common good do not logically and convincingly align in favor of one clear choice over another, then you have either been willfully ignoring the news or your cortex lacks sufficient density and gyri to function as anything other than a loose wet hat. Either way, you should not be rewarded for your stupidity and sloth with network attention and a free pass to the presidential debates and multiple whistle stops in your home town for town meetings with the candidates. Do your homework. It's your civic duty.

Point three alludes to those people who expect to have a vision or other intuitive brain spasm that will push them over the edge in favor of one candidate (maybe they'll wake up and find that Rover's tongue is lolling out his mouth to the left on November 2, indicating that the universe wants them to vote Democratic.) These are the people who suddenly were galvanized by the bin Laden video. NOW I know what to do. Because I had this visceral reaction! And that's how all critical decision-making should unfold. Asshats.

The fourth group is the dank, silverfish-infested basement of the voting bloc, and those who should be visited with swift vengeance and furious anger, a la Ezekiel. Tom Tomorrow did a great cartoon about this after the 2000 election. Look at me! How interesting, that I'm perplexed by all this! Don't you want to cater to me? Tools. It should perhaps not be too surprising that such people would flourish in the shadow of the Bush presidency, glorifying as it has willful ignorance, ham-fisted thuggery, and the vapid stare as traits to be admired and emulated. The fact is that these people have been around forever. I've never been bothered by them so much, except that at the core they are simply liars, and it is more costly than ever to make bad choices based on a lie.

So that's my rant. It's almost Tuesday here, but we're 14 hours ahead so in this way like so many others I am distanced from all the frenetic happenings on the 2nd. As they say about nuclear war, I suspect when it's all over the living will envy the dead. Of course, it won't be over until December or January, or maybe even later once the lawyers are all through.

Go vote. And if you haven't yet decided which way you're going to go, at least have the decency not to be proud of the fact.


posted by MT at 8:36 AM |