Memories of the Campaign (2 of 3): Abortion.

When campaigning out in the burbs, this one volunteer got this late 20s lower middle-class (white) woman at the door, and when he told her he was going door-to-door with the Dems, she was like, "You know, I'm a one-issue voter, and you probably know what that issue is...", and as soon as he started to say that he understood and was trying to gracefully extract himself from the conversation, she was like, "After I got raped 10 years ago and decided to keep my child, I'm pro-life and that's the only thing that matters, I can never imagine anyone restricting the options of someone in that situation."

Memories of the Campaign (1 of 3): Angels.

From campaigning in the burbs, I remember going up to this one host on my list of registered democrats, and there were all these little angel statues by the door, and little ceramic plates with mottos like "God bless this home", and I was really nervous that the Dems had moved and some pop culture-y evangelicals had moved in...

Until I got up to the door, and noticed some statue of a many-armed buddha-looking thing, and something in sanskrit painted on the threshold and candles with flowers by each side of the door, and then I looked on my list and noticed it was a middle-aged Indian couple, who must have picked up some American Christian kitsch shit to add to their pantheon.

Phew - Election results (or the state I'm in about the state I'm in).

I put in a lot of canvassing time over the past 2 weeks for the Dems -

3 late afternoon 2-3 hour shifts after work

-and-

1 entire weekend in a suburb canvassing for a rep in a 50-50 race

-and-

1 whole day on Election Day calling, canvasssing, flyer-ing by the subway.

It was a tight race for the rep, the senator and the gov, and though the rep got blown out of the water (the senator less so), I'm glad nevertheless that at least the gov won, otherwise I'd be pissed at all the time I wasted.

A friend on "The Social Network".

I went the other weekend to see "The Social Network" with a friend I know from the sex documentary series, who is a psychology Ph.D. student and into BDSM.

We were both blown away by the movie, though we found the beginning scene a little interminable (sp.?).

Afterwards we went out for some beers, and he had some really interesting thoughts about the movie:

- So many people are seeing this movie, it's effectively going to be the narrative about the creation of Facebook, forever.

- It's like a John Hughes nerd revenge movie with stereotypical jocks and success for the nerd at the end, only the nerd is a bully in his own way who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and so really isn't a sympathetic hero and his victory is empty.

Horror at my one friend with the cat's apartment: THEFT!!!

The other week my one friend with the cat was in the kitchen before going to bed, when she looked out in the back courtyard of her huge apartment building and noticed some guy loitering by the dumpster and looking around, perhaps at all the bikes locked up on all the back porches everywhere, so she turned off the lights to watch him... And after a minute, he went up the stairwell right outside her back door.

She didn't know what to do, in case he was a neighbor she hadn't met, and she didn't want to call the police over nothing, but neither did she want to open her door and take her bike outside, in case he was upstairs waiting and was armed and dangerous.

So, she went to bed, and in the morning she had forgotten all about it and was in a rush to go to work, but when she got back at night, she looked out, and saw that he had busted up the wood post on her porch to which her $900 European racing bike was locked, and he had hauled off the bike lock and all to be able to get the Kryptonite lock off at a more leisurely pace.

Horror at the GAP: Frenchmen.

The other weekend was beautiful and my one friend from Buffalo who's petite and studies Hinduism called me to see if I wanted to meet her downtown and walk around while she hit up some sails.

After we left the GAP, she asked me if I had noticed the huge group of French people.

"Yeah," I was like, "There was a ton of them in the men's section."

And, she told me that two of the mid-to-late 20s French guys got on the escalator after her, and as she stood there, one started making these sucking noises with her lips, and they said things in a low voice in French to each other, probably dirty.

"You mean sounds like this?", I was like, and made short "psw"-"psw"-"psw" sounds with my lips.

"No," she was like, "Longer and much wetter, it was so dirty."

"Why would they even do that?", I was like. "What kind of reaction were they hoping for?"

"Well," she was like, "Probably that they'd get my attention, and then I'd turn over and notice they were French, like I give a fuck."

Homeless person in my new neighborhood.

On my way to that little market where I shop at, there was this incredibly obese (black) woman sitting on the street begging, asking everyone who passed by to give her a quarter so she could get "a Big Mac and fry".

Next to her on her dirty blanket was a peeled tangerine.