Now that the election is over...

(BTW, the boy in this poem doesn't represent Barack Obama.)

The boy sat in a playroom alone
On a scratchy carpet,
Waiting for his parents
To come and pick him up.

All the toys were all broken
And the other kids
Long since gone
From the scary painted walls.

The lights flickered.
The boy sighed.
He wanted a cookie,
Or someone to talk with.

Outside a noise grew
A siren went by,
Blue and red lights
Painted the room.

He heard a crowd growing
The boy looked down
And cringed from the window
At the pulsing anger below

But when he looked again
He saw no hate
And that they were dancing
And calling his name.

----------

I had to defriend somebody on Facebook yesterday. An old high school friend. We were in band together, and back then she was really cool. First girl to ever talk dirty to me. When she found me online, I looked at her profile, and was at first taken aback by her "Republican" and "Christian" status. Not a good combination in my book, when describing yourself. Those two together usual signify "religious right." But I was willing to look past labels and such, and for awhile, even though we would have contrasting status updates, we were quite friendly.

But gradually, her pro-Palin postings chipped away bit by bit at my open-mindedness. By Wednesday, the day after the election, her status update said, "Welcome to the United Socialists of America!"

The socialism charge during this campaign and in general has irked me as being particularly knee-jerk fascist and betraying a lack of intellect. Barack Obama has gone out of his way to appeal to the centrist middle-class - his judicial criteria commentary notwithstanding - especially on taxes. This red-baiting by the McCain campaign was a scare-tactic the whole way, and it really depressed me that normal-thinking people could be drawn in by its base populism. Socialism. You know, the people that brought you the 40 hour work week and child labor laws? As I've said before, socialism unchecked is of course bad, but so is capitalism. Communism to one extreme, Fascism at the other end. When opposing forces balance against each other, the whole is as strong as it ever can be. Great leaders recognize this very basic tenet.

Well, later that day she posted a note. I should've copied and pasted it here in an attempt to make her an internet celebrity, but instead I just went straight to my friends list deleted her. That was because her screed included the words, "Fag," "Nigger," and "Jew," just one sentence after something about promoting "God's glory," ending up with, "now we'll NEVER get oil out of ANWR!!!" (as if in a McCain administration drilling would commence on Inauguration Day and by Friday gas prices would be back to pre-Carter levels. McCain didn't support drilling in ANWR to begin with.) and a whole lot of bad spelling, incoherent sentence structure and misplaced punctuation in between.

Oh, and there was something about a Liberal Education Agenda in there too.

----------

Tonight I got on my new Cycleops rollers for the first time. I did try my friend Mark's set last spring, very unsuccessfully. No, Greta, I didn't make a video of it this time, but I should've. Not only did I ride for 20 minutes without falling once, I eventually let go of wall and put both hands on the bars, shifted, played with my computer, went no handed, and then finally drank from my bottle out of the cage, twice.

I should've tried juggling chainsaws, too.

----------

Something tells me the Daily Show and Steven Colbert will need Sarah Palin to stay relevant in order to stay relevant.