I took today off from work. On the vacation request form I wrote, “Celebrating a Kerry victory -or- slitting my wrists”. Now it looks like I might have to eat those words.

The fact that this election is a cliffhanger really scares me. Shouldn’t this have been a landslide? Bush had absolutely nothing to run on other than his hollow promises to keep us safe from the scary terrorists and the scary homosexuals. Is that really all you have to say to gather more than half of this country’s electoral votes? Aren’t most people rational enough and decent enough to just be pissed off by talk like that? And the media is calling “W’s strong suit “Moral” issues. What the fuck? Aren’t all issues moral issues? At what point did the far right, fundamentalist views claim the rights to the term “moral issues”? Jesus, maybe I should slit my wrists.

During the course of this campaign, I did what I could to inform/influence the people in my little social circles. In the end, I was quite surprised at the number of people who were actually listening. At the time of my rantings, I was really only trying to vent. But such influence is only needed so much here in Minneapolis. This is a pretty liberal town. It’s not too hard to find a sympathetic ear for liberal minded political rantings around here and that might well be the single biggest reason I’ve settled here. Kerry did take Minnesota. But that wouldn’t have happened without this fine city. I know what it’s like out there, on the outside of the city limits. I lived there for much of my life. It’s not very therapeutic to vent your liberal woes in Stearns County. You’ll usually find yourself ganged up on.

So here I am with a day off. The sun is shining for a change. It has no idea what’s happening in this country and I could stand to forget it for a while myself. I think I’ll hop on my motorcycle and take a nice long ride through the Minnesota countryside. If I’m lucky, some of those folks out there might have already taken down their Bush/Cheney signs.