Election day
I am just back from my polling location at the garage of 238 Glenview, where I was able to express my opinion on such important matters as Proposition R, which would change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant:
Just as France presented the Statue of Liberty as its gift to the nation, the citizens of San Francisco may now bestow their own special gift to the country by renaming our award winning waste water treatment plant in honor of outgoing President George W Bush. We think this is a fitting memorial for a truly outstanding Commander-in-Chief. On matters ranging from diplomacy to fiscal and environmental stewardship, no other President has had such a dramatic impact on the country and the Constitution in such a short time…
Critics of this measure point out that the initiative… memorializes an administration best forgotten. To this we simply say that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. President Bush has left us with a gigantic mess, and this facility symbolizes the city’s deft ability to clean up its share of the financial and diplomatic mess left in this administration’s wake. It will also become the world’s first presidential sewage plant, a potential tourist attraction, and therefore an opportunity for the dedicated plant workers to educate visitors about this essential and heretofore unknown public works.
While I was signing in, one of the volunteers at the voting garage asked me if I “knew anyone at the school of arts,” because apparently an art student had just been here and she had the same last name as me! I said that was amazing because as far as I know, all the Batumans are related to each other (although not—in answer to a question raised by one reader of my LRB review on graphic novels—to Batman).
“She must have been your distant cousin!” opined the volunteer. I looked all around the garage, but did not find my artistic distant cousin.
Later I overheard another volunteer talking about how you get a free coffee at Starbucks if you show them your “I Voted!” sticker. Well, I like free coffee as much as the next relatively obscure writer so I went to the nearest Starbucks, on Portola, only to discover that this Starbucks was itself a polling location. It was strange to see the voting booths interspersed with the shelves selling mugs, disturbing memoirs, and Barista Bears.
Dear readers! I definitely intend to resume more regular blog production in the very near future. In the meantime I encourage you to visit the n+1 website, which has posted the political reminiscences of some of its writers, including me!
The reminiscences were solicited this morning by Keith Gessen, whose own political reminiscences are here on his blog. “Here are some things I remember, from being an old person,” Gessen begins. “I remember the turnstiles in the Willie Horton ad, representative of Michael Dukakis’s commitment to releasing black rapists and murderers.” Well, my reminiscences start with the 1984 election, so I prefaced them with: “You want old? I’ll give you old.” They ended up having to omit the whole discourse on oldness though—you won’t find it on their web site. But that’s why I have a blog, right? You heard it on My Life and Thoughts!
Tags: civic duty, current events, d-list, Keith Gessen, keith gessen blog, monuments, n+1, politics, reviews