Telephone Pole-Tire Art in LA

I put it off as long as I could, but as the last few hours of polling began to tick away I caved and voted anyway. It was easy for me to eschewed early voting, we don’t have it here and I didn’t race to the polls on election morning either. There are no prizes for voting first. And what is it with all of these “I Voted” stickers? Are we all children now, who need a shiny sticker for doing our civic duty? Last time I checked, you had to be an adult to vote. Anne did her usual election official shtick and pulled a double shift at the polls. When she finally got home, she watched the election returns on TV, while I listened to them from the next room. After a couple of hours of that dribble, I wished that more than Tom Brokaw’s cellphone had been turned off. The news was not good, but the constant attempts by the media to make a mountain out of this rather mole hill of an election was just as bad. Come on guys, it was a Seinfeld election, all about nothing. How much more predictable could this second term midterm election be?

When I went to bed last night the news was not good. It was even worse this morning. Mostly that was just the national news, what with the Republican taking over the Senate and numerous statehouses. Locally, we had no races of national significance. Our gerrymandered Democratic US and state representatives and state senator were all safely reelected. At work there was the usual Monday morning quarterbacking of the election, with a decidedly Republican bent. I sat out that discussion and soon the normal workplace rhythms returned and my busy day picked up speed.

I was so busy that I didn’t get to check my email until lunch. There was an email from a coworker that asked this rather rude question, “Mark, did you have to go to Walmart last night for more Vaseline, because of the election?” This guy and you knew that it had to be a guy, regularly sends me these personally addressed, politically provocative emails, on company email, with what seems to me for the sole purpose of getting my goat. I’ve asked him to stop in the past and he did for a while, but then he started up again. Normally, I don’t respond at all, but I have made the mistake of doing so in the past. This time I responded to him and his manager and told them both that I did not appreciate his email. His manager said that he would speak with him and then asked me if I wanted to take it further. I said no. The individual responded separately. He felt hurt that I had done what I did, but I think that I made my point.