Natalee Holloway is still missing.

If I still lived 3K miles to the East, I would be laughing at this little feller’s apoplexy in person. He does get into a groove of righteous, why can’t they see what I can see umbrage. Fun to fuel in person. (Not to mention his inclination to troll the boards of morons and hangers on, who feel it necessary to follow the minute war of the Twittys.)

What hbee is missing, however, is not the somewhat important story of this being an election day. No, the real story is this earth-shatteringly important one. Radio personality James Keown may have offed his wife in a story involving two of my personal favorite made for Court TV details — Lying about an Ivy League legacy and ethylene glycol.

If you watch too many episodes of Court TV’s Cold Case Files or any of a number of A&E true crime shows, you know the dangers of anti-freeze. It appears to be the poison of choice among the lazy murderer grabbing at anything around the house.

Of course it’s not really possible, but I want to see one case in which someone gets away with that kind of poisoning. Thanks to how it all breaks down, the appearance of crystals and oxalic acid, it seems pretty easy to find (thus, in my opinion an unworthy poison).

(So far, in this hot, breaking, dramatic unveiling, the best detail was siphoned out from the wacky shenanigans and emotional interviewing of CNN’s favorite minx and former prosecutor, Nancy Grace. She just got into a little spar with some expert about the sweetness of ethylene glycol, which involved his clarifying he had tasted but not chugged Prestone 3.)

Meanwhile, in the annals of dating advice — any time your man mentions a grad school education or acceptance to a major program, ask for a letter or maybe some transcripts. It could save your life.

Man, hard to believe that old Cali is the world’s eighth largest economy in the fucking world. Today’s election cried the fuck out for a UN inspection of the voting process for this western country.

First, a governor, who rode in on the fixing a broke government horse, throws out a crazy-ass list of initiatives. Par example (which I should be writing in Austrian, only I guess in Austria they speak German or some shit), any way, in the middle of a decade between the statistical bookends of a 10-year national census, Arnie is hoping everyone will want to change the current gerrymandering shapes of voting areas. Great fucking idea, if the people who pay attention to this shit didn’t keep pointing out how quickly the demographics keep changing.

And, fuck representational democracy, better we pick three old men to make the plan and draw the new shapes.

As stupid as the questions may be, and some of them just piss me off (I’m thinking parental notification for abortion, including “minors” old enough to be married), that’s not why I want some investigatin’ going on. Nope it was the process. Today’s experience had me longing for my distant land of The PR of Cambridge, which even though it’s done on paper with the kind of magic markers your mom wouldn’t buy, because they dry out, and included a complex algorithm of proportional voting, left me feeling safe and democratic.

I live in what is actually the largest city in Northern Cali. San Jose trumps the far more fabled and touted San Francisco. However, here, it ain’t like no city I ever seen. My neighborhood apparently has so few registered voters, it doesn’t rate a polling place. Nope everyone in my precinct had to vote by a paper ballot mailed as to an absentee voter. (Which, according to the Santa Clara County Dems, with whom I registered my rock the vote right, is just fucking ducky. Apparently, this major-sized county is one of the ones in which voters have no proof of voting (or some shit, I don’t quite get, because it’s done with computers and somehow that translates to an inability to proffer evidence.)

M., who kept his address from the presidential race, voted in some dude’s garage that was converted to a polling place. What the fuck? Ain’t there enough schools, classrooms, old-age centers, administrative offices or whatever municipal floor space in this town? A citizen’s garage? How developing nation is that?

I forgot to mail my mail in ballot, but that was fine. I had a list from the officially poll-type organization that uses garages and doesn’t give me a place to go with drop off points for my ballot.

In my head, I imagined one of the big metal boxes with some kind of roller and lever and mysterious clockwork gears, in which I would lay my ballot, just like I knew from back home. Or maybe, a big metal mailbox labeled ballots, but otherwise looking all voter-y official.

What I got was a canvas bag with nice embroidery on top with the county name and a precinct number. The zipper encircling the lovely embroidered top seemed sturdy and athletic and secure. And, the leather-lined, ballot-sized slot made it all seem quite official. But, honest to fucking god, I just slipped my precious civic duty into an official county gym bag.

M. is a asleep in his (d’oh, should be our) little bed. I foolishly am updating this piece of shit.

If you care, the buttons on top are a bit different. The one called “VIDEOS” is a dung heap, toxic waste pile of random shit. Here’s an interesting comedy tidbit — It’s an unfortunately not uncommon thing for new comics (christ, I almost wrote “newbie”) to listen to their tapes or reflect on their performances and hear uproarious laughter. Basically, a lot of performers are delusional.

I, on the other hand, watch my sets on video and think only, “Jesus fucking christ, stop fidgeting.” Or, “Goddamn, you look bovine.” Or, perhaps, “Look, you are wearing the same clothes in half of the videos.” (Apparently, I have a couple of comedy shirts.)

Occasionally, I notice laughter. But, it seems thin and week and pitying. (Despite my belief in my funny, ha ha, point of view, else why would I make us all suffer so.)

So, yeah, check out the videos.

So a rather famous, Irish band is playing at the Oakland Arena this
week. Turns out someone in the band, who is also quite famous, does
some of the same kind of stuff that goes on in my office. Although,
we don’t generally wear sunglasses.

But, you know, with shit like ethics still extant in the world (yeah,
I know, hard to believe), ain’t no one here going. Boo hoo.
Especially for me (even though I wasn’t actually on the ticket list.)
Boo hoo for my proximity to fame.

In completed unrelated news, other than in a sense of dogooder
happiness, I’m mildly obsessed currently with “Perverted Justice”
and MSNBC and this ongoing story.
Don’t get me wrong, I will go out on that obscure little limb and
state unequivocally, I am wicked anti-pedophilia. Yup, diddling the
kiddies is a big moral black hole in my personal philosophy. I’m
against it.

Still and all, sting operations in which creepy guys are invited to
bring beer and drop by my lonely, alledged, left at home alone
13-year-old lair are almost as creepy as the guys themselves. Imagine
the fright of Chris Hansen, a microphone and a camera in your face.=20
That can’t be good can it?

As sick and dangerous as your neighborhood predator might be, I’m not
sure high-profile vigilante fun for the rolling cameras is a panacea.

In between bouts of wanting to punch Senator Bill Frist in the face, I’ve been thinking about back to back conversations at work that couldn’t have been scripted better to remind that the past is the past is the past.

Yesterday, the topic was conformity with the boss mentioning that as of late, based on some peer to peer conversations, she realized she was on the freakish side of liberal when it came to tolerance in hiring. Well, yeah, duh, not surprising since you tend toward jeans in a more structured environment, academic feel or no, and like to tweak the old establishment your own damn self.

The weird, looking backward aspect was her example, she would indeed, she said, hire an otherwise qualified and capable job candidate with visible piercings or tattoos or blue hair or maybe a gothic fashion sense. Actually, I got the feeling she would relish having a bad-ass looking goth freakishly minding the store.

The hair, tattoo, piercing thang was a familiar theme, dissected in the old world of the old job. The consensus–fuck no, no job, get out you weirdo. Seriously, the same example, unnatural colored hair, tattoos or piercing were the standard for what not to hire in conversations around the cliched water cooler.

My old boss stated it baldly, “If someone came in looking like that, I would have to assume it was a reflection of poor judgment, and I would have to wonder how that judgment would be for the job.” In other words, can you really trust those people? (Never mind that a quick trip to a local mall would suggest almost all people 25 show some sign of that so-called impaired judgment.)

The other conversation which echoed back was about dating musicians. In one of the fine examples of fucked up line blurring the ex-boss counseled an underling to dump her beau, instead of marrying him, because she was throwing her life away on a deadbeat. She opined that the underling had a bright and successful academic future and deserved one of their own to complete her happy picture of domesticity, some wonderful bright boy, full of earning potential and solid, earthbound dreams.

Maybe fair enough, but the flaw of the existant boy who was being dismissed amounted to only that he was a musician, a writer and, therefore, a poor earner. Nevermind that he founded a band that garnered some critical notice and a bit of CD sales and some touring. Forget that he is sweet-tempered, and at least when I knew them, absolutely devoted to his woman.

Many conversations in the workplace focused on the waste of this girl with this boy, this boy who would amount to nothing but a scruffy ne’er-do-well with sideburns and a guitar.

In my new, spooky world, the new spooky boss also talked about a musician with no earning potential in contrast to a promising academic girlfriend. Yeah, only she married him.

My new place of employ is so damned invested, I just can’t deal sometimes. It’s like I couldn’t even stab these people if I wanted to. If I did someone would just have to organize a town meeting and community fundraiser to like rehabilitate my bad ass stabbing self or something.

Today, it was free flu shots. Tomorrow, it’s a special lunch-time event to go over Governor Arnie’s special made up legislative stuff. It’s a bunch of referendums (referenda?) to which know one knows the answers. So we’re having a little edjumucation/voters hoedown.

Hard-core earnestness and doing the right thing and all.

Oddly in the disease-curing hopefuls’ world in which I used to toil, there was never this level of engagement in a better society. Fuck, those people could only stumble a bit beyond their egos to ocassionally bump into something useful. OK, maybe not all of them, but I am surprised that most cancer drugs have medicinal-sounding names instead of “Dr. Johnson’s magical elixir,” just so some asswipe doctor could see his name every day.

On top of that, the blinders to real world issues, like special elections and state referendum, were far too opaque. You know, what’s the future of the world and all when there’s hairs to split among learned colleagues and publication counts to pad?

I probably will fare a bit better at this gig over the last, and who knows maybe I’ll drop some of my workplace suspicion and skepticism. At least, I’ll keep riding the gravy train and soaking up the learning moments whilst I can.

At work there were free flu shots. I spent the day going back and
forth in my head as to whether to snag one, since I am not really
exposed to children or the elderly or anyone else weak in the line of
disease fire.

(In my racist soul, I would argue living with the third-world spawned
boy-o is a risk, but after 20 or so years, he’s probably clean.)

Then, GW made a speech about pandemics, so I thought "fuck it."
Wouldn’t we all be better off doing the opposite of whatever genius he
spouts?

But it was free and easy. Just a few steps to a conference room in
the same vicinity as my little cube. And, what the hell, when we go
to Malaysia, it will be one last thing to worry about. (Except, of
course, for the avian flu that is going to kill us all, just like SARS
did.)

If I get sick this winter, though, the fault will rest squarely on the
shoulders of GWB. His speechifying confused me.