And Now for Something Completely Different
At 11 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 4, 2008, a simple three-word news story moved on the Associated Press wire:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Obama wins presidency.
As much as I wanted this to happen, I refused to believe it actually could happen until the moment Barack Obama reached 270 electoral votes. I find myself wondering what else can happen, now that the impossible has become possible. For the first time in my adult life I live in a blue state. The 21st century has begun and the old rules no longer apply. Do we finally get hovercars and jet packs? Will college football adopt a playoff?
Florida Poll Worker Challenges My Right to Vote
When I voted at 7:10 a.m. this morning in St. Johns County, Florida, my right to vote was challenged because a poll worker decided my signature did not match my driver's license signature. I was given an "Affadavit of Elector When Signature is Different" form to sign and was going to be given a provisional ballot, but I objected to that decision, telling the worker that I've been voting at the same precinct with the same address for a decade and they were "abrogating my right to vote." (When negotiating a government bureaucracy, the most obscure verb wins.)
In Florida, provisional ballots aren't counted unless they are approved by a canvassing board. My wife has observed the work of these boards as a newspaper reporter, and it's an arbitrary and capricious process. I decided at that point I wasn't going to leave the polling place until I was able to cast a legitimate ballot or I was ordered to leave. I don't want to look back on this election, years later, as the one in which I might or might not have voted for Barack Obama.
I always bring my sons to vote, so my fourth grader was at my side, telling the worker that my signature was acceptable. My mother was visiting from Texas, and she also walked up and affirmed who I was, which demonstrates how thorough I am at providing proper forms of ID.
A supervisor at the precinct discussed the decision to make me vote provisionally with a poll observer, who I'm guessing is an attorney because he wore glasses on a chain perched on the end of his nose, like someone who might be called upon to inspect a hanging chad. He told her, "The issue here isn't whether the signature matches; it's whether he is the person he says he is." He then told me not to move, because he was going to go outside and make a call.
He didn't have to go outside. The decision was made that I could fill out a form that reflected my updated signature, and I was given a regular ballot.
Though my signature has grown progressively worse over time -- millions of mouse clicks have been hell on my mad cursive skills -- it's clear to me that poll workers in this county are being told to apply strong scrutiny to signatures. This seems excessive to me when the state requires a driver's license to vote, and I had my license and voter's registration card with me. Eight years ago a worker also challenged my signature, but another worker told him he was wrong. Individual votes in Florida were a pretty big deal that time around.
When I was leaving the building, a poll worker who was not a witness to the challenge told me unexpectedly that I should "put this on your blog." Apparently, he overheard my wife talking about the situation and mentioning that I'm one of those people.
As a general rule, I resist the temptation in commercial or governmental conflicts to play the blogger card, because I don't want to be the douchebag who doesn't get the banana peppers he ordered on his pizza, so he threatens Domino's with the dire consequences of a strongly worded blog entry on a site with Google page rank 6.
But this was so going on my blog.
CBS Takes 'Ex List' Off Schedule
CBS has pulled The Ex List off its schedule, which is good news for my TV Death Pool:
Eye has yanked the drama off the sked, effective this Friday. A repeat of NCIS will air in its place.
Decision comes after The Ex List averaged 5.3 million viewers and a 1.5 rating/5 share in its final airing, last Friday. The Ex List repped CBS' weak link on Friday nights, where Ghost Whisperer and Numbers both won their hours.
The Ex List had an idea that was better in concept than application. A single woman (Elizabeth Reaser) is told by a psychic that she has one year to find her true love or end up alone, and the guy's somebody she already dated.
Reaser's an appealing actress as the unlucky-in-love woman, but every week she chased after -- and usually bedded -- some old boyfriend who had become a stranger to her. So there was a new male guest star every week, like on Love Boat, but he wasn't just climbing aboard a boat.
Cyber-Cowboy Post-Apocalyptic Kung Fu
I found a great "cyber-cowboy post-apocalyptic fu" music video on another blog this morning. Watch for the appearance of Col. Wilma Deering, the Planet of the Apes Statue of Liberty and the film crew in a mirror:
This video for Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" is the work of Joseph Kahn, a prolific music video director whose next project is a film based on William Gibson's Neuromancer. (Via Stan!.)
Local Blogger: 'Barack Obama Loathes My Kind'
I mentioned earlier that some of my neighbors in North Florida are having trouble accepting the possibility of an Obama presidency. One of them is Kim "Velociman" Crawford, who's going to flee to the Georgia mountains if Obama wins:
... I firmly believe Barack Obama absolutely loathes my kind. This man will not be content to win the presidency. He will spend his waking hours thereafter not pursuing the legitimate goals of state, but punishing those who would dare to oppose him. ...
Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. ... Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way.
So I will cast my pathetic vote, and ramp up my relocation to the mountains. Reduce my footprint. Carbon? That will be a nice byproduct, but I mean my personal footprint. My credit footprint. My interface with authority footprint. I'm researching micro-hydro water turbines for that stream, windmills for water, a half-acre patch for vegetables, a few goats, and a bison. Just because I want a ------- bison.
Velociman's our region's greatest crank, which ought to be an official ceremonial position like poet laureate. One of my favorite posts of his gave a primer on how to speak Southern:
... we talked like many people in southern or rural areas talk. You make eye contact when you address each other, then you look down, at the ground, and spit in the grass, and rub it absent-mindedly with the toe of your shoe. As if to say, I enjoy your company, but not that much. I ain't gay, trucklehead! Talk, spit, rub. Had many a conversation doing that.
Apache HTTP Server 2.2.10 Released
This afternoon I upgraded the servers that run the Drudge Retort and SportsFilter to Apache 2.2.10, a minor upgrade released on Oct. 15 that fixes a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in FTP URLs discovered by Marc Bevand of the network security company Rapid 7.
The rest of the changes in the new version look like minor bug fixes.
I compile the Apache web server from source code on both servers, a process that was difficult the first time around but has been easy since then. After I download a new version, I upgrade with three commands:
Arguing Politics During My Vasectomy
To give you an idea of how tough my wife is, she delivered two of our sons via natural childbirth, skipping out on epidural anasthesia in the belief it's better for the baby. One son was 11 pounds and three ounces. When he hit the birth canal, her screams were so loud that I asked for a sedative to calm my nerves. Nurses stuck around after their shifts to find out how much he weighed.
To give you an idea of how tough I am, I researched vasectomies for five years before consenting to the procedure. You can't be too careful about these things. I wanted to give the medical community time to work out the kinks.
So it's last Friday, and I find myself at Planned Parenthood in Jacksonville, lying flat on my back with my pants around my ankles, trying to find my happy place. A urologist begins handling up on my junk, explaining each step in the process with the unabashed enthusiasm of Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Desperate to change the subject, I look away from my imperiled dingus and tell the doctor about a problem I had completing the online registration on his web site. The components of the web form disappear on Mozilla Firefox when you begin to input data. I had to switch to Internet Explorer to get it to work. He seems interested. We lament cross-platform browser incompatibilities and get into a debate about whether Safari or Firefox is the second most popular browser among users. He lays a surgical drape around my genitals. I let him win the argument.
I tell him that I publish sites, and when he asks which ones I am faced with a socially difficult decision: Do I tell the person approaching my wang with a cauterization tool that I publish a stridently liberal web site?
Keep in mind that we're in conservative North Florida, where doctors and just about everybody else are rock-ribbed Republicans and the presidential campaign's getting angrier by the day. Some of my neighbors in this right-wing community are finding it difficult to accept that a Democrat might win the White House. They thought a cure had been found for that disease years ago.
I bite the bullet and tell the doctor about the Drudge Retort. My wife, who's in the room observing the surgery without an ounce of squeamishness, visibly winces.
The doctor's Douglas G. Stein, a Tampa urologist who offers a no-scalpel, no-needle vasectomy procedure that's advertised throughout the state. His web site offers more reassurance to fearful patients than my wife was ever offered before childbirth. I'm not the only guy with a heightened sense of anxiety regarding my tallywacker.
How is vasectomy done without a scalpel?
No-scalpel vasectomy instruments, used in China since the mid-70's and introduced into the United States in 1989, are simply a very pointy hemostat, used initially to make a tiny opening into anesthetized skin of the scrotal wall, and a ring clamp, used initially to secure each vas tube in turn beneath this opening. The pointy hemostat is then used to spread all layers (the vas sheath) down to the vas tube itself and to then deliver a small loop of the vas through the opening as the ring clamp is released. In turn, the ring clamp is used to hold the vas, while the pointy hemostat spreads adherent tissue and blood vessels away from the vas under direct vision, so that the vas can then be divided with a fine surgical scissors and the upper end cauterized with a hand-held cautery unit so that it will seal closed.
How is vasectomy done without a needle?
Traditionally, a local anesthetic has been injected into the skin and alongside each vas tube with a very fine needle, as small as diabetics use to inject themselves with insulin. One could feel a tiny poke in the skin, then a bit of a squeeze as the anesthetic was applied to each vas tube. However, most people do not like needles of any size ... especially there!
A MadaJet is a spray applicator which delivers a fine stream of liquid anesthetic at a pressure great enough to penetrate the skin to a depth of about 3/16", deep enough to envelop the vas tube held snugly beneath the skin. Each vas is positioned in turn beneath the very middle of the front scrotal wall and given two or three squirts. That numbs the skin and both vas tubes adequately for 99% of men.
Stein becomes so animated talking politics that he doesn't announce the cauterization of my first vas tube. I figure it out when I spot a small wisp of smoke rising to the ceiling above my bits and pieces.
When I mention with excitement my recent Obama rally trip to Orlando, he asks if I saw the following billboard on my drive down Interstate 4.
I say that I did, still unsure whether the doctor -- who has one testicle to go -- leans left or right.
At this point, Stein offers a final bit of reassurance: "Those are my billboards."
As Florida blogger Jim White recently discovered, Stein replaced several of his vasectomy billboards across the state with the cutting message "Stop McSame." Stein tells me with great excitement the interest his effort has generated. White calls this campaign "preventing unwanted presidents."
I relax, to the extent that it's ever possible to relax while a stranger applies scissors to your mantackle.
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