Damn, I'll be glad when Nov. 3 arrives.

No matter what the outcome, I will be very happy when Nov. 2 is over and done with.

I am tired of hearing political commercials in my sleep. I am tired of having said sleep interrupted by 1:24 a.m. robo-calls. I am tired of everyone blaming everyone else for all the ills of America.

I think my dear 80+-year-old friend "Helen" says it very well: http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/i-can-see-november-on-my-tv-so-i-turned-it-off/ I, too, would like to toss my cable/dish 24-hour news bullshit and trade it in for the old rabbit ears. But I'm still likely to get the all-night commercials and the robo-calls in the wee hours of the morning.

When is everyone else going to get it? I don't want to hear what your plan is. Because believe it or not, I know damn well that your "Plan," whatever it may be, is only a pipe dream. It's only what you want us to hear. Because once you get in that deep mucky morass that is Congress, with a few hundred other people's points of view mixed in, your plan is only as good as the one little tiny point where it intersects with someone else's ... and so on. As I see it, government is just one big pyramid scheme.

I am also tired of hearing that people are Against Big Government. That is all well and good ... but my question is, why are you running for office? Isn't that just going to perpetuate the "Big Government?" Could you please define "Big Government" for me?

One of the worst parts of the whole campaign season is the ads that are not talking about anyone's plan, or beliefs, or values. They are talking about what their opponent has done wrong. I'm not really interested in what your opponent has done wrong this week or last week or 10 years ago. I'm interested in what are your core beliefs. What is motivating you to run for this position? What do you hope to accomplish?

The only amusing part of this is how they try to find the least-flattering--bordering on the ridiculous--photographs of an opposing candidate to put in their ads. You know what I'm talking about: the ones with their mouths wide open (presumably spouting bullshit).  Or sleeping during a court case or a congressional session. Or whatever. The kind of pictures that people usually take of me. I would love to have that staff job. But I think maybe they hire those people from TMZ.

I always used to label myself as "apolitical" but I really can't classify myself that way anymore, now that I've joined the political fray too. I truly have no aspirations beyond my current village council position, but it has really made me more aware that "politics" is a part of everyday life. In this capacity, as well as in my former life as a newspaper editor, I have actually had conversations with real political candidates. And from each of them, all I really want to know is: What do you believe? It's not easy to get to that place, because most of them just spout what they think you want to hear. (Sometimes, ad nauseum). But, from a few of them, I've actually learned that they do have sincere opinions and beliefs, and I admire those candidates' honesty in telling me what their beliefs are ... whether or not I agree with them 100%.

Now, how they hope to accomplish a specific project is always pretty nebulous. But I admire the ones who are willing to admit that. I can see from my own experience in local government that actual "accomplishments" you can point to are pretty few and far between. Sometimes you hit it lucky, but most of the stuff you deal with is pretty simple and often mundane.

Oh, and then there is the candidate who admitted to me that with term limits, it's pretty hard to get anything accomplished in our state government system. Because each representative is only allowed two terms, the first six to nine months of their first term are usually a learning time. And about the time they figure out what they are doing, it's time to start running for re-election. So, I did some quick math and asked if that meant that out of every 24-month term, which actually starts two months after the election, reducing the actual "term" to 22 months, there is about six months' worth of work actually done. His answer was, yes, that's probably a pretty good assessment of how it works.

Really? We are paying people for this? Lots of money? And we have so many people out of work in our state? We can't finance our schools, but these people are getting paid for two years to do a half a year's worth of work? Could we just get rid of this "big government" for starters?

Come on over sometime and take an ugly picture of me. I think I might be featured in someone's political ad next time I have to run for re-election.

Living in a Blackberry World

Let me start by saying I am pretty darned fond of my cell phone. Especially my new one with the QWERTY keyboard that lets me text a heck of a lot more easily than I could in the past. 

But that's just me. After all, I'm 56 years old, I've been using a simple old cell phone intermittently for 12 years, and I just now upgraded to a texting phone. And that's all I want it to do ... at least for the foreseeable future. I wasn't at all discouraged by the reviews of the phone I decided to purchase that indicated it wouldn't plug in properly to their laptop to convert blah blah blah to HTML. It simply wasn't important to me. And two years from now if I need something different, I might decide to get it. Or maybe not.

I'm a little more concerned, however, about little kids who are obviously living in a Blackberry-oriented world, and what does that say about not only the kids ... but us?

Let me explain. My seven-year-old grandson has never been one who liked talking on a telephone. I remember how much I liked it when my kids got little play telephones (and theirs were all dial-phones, we hadn't even upgraded to touch-tone yet). Listening in to their imaginary conversations with grandma or friends was really a lot of fun. But I also had kids who didn't really want to bother with it, so I wasn't really dismayed that Chase wasn't interested. Peyton has certainly made up for his reticence, anyway. 

Lately, however, Chase has been begging for a cell phone. I can sort of see that. When my kids were little, we had a family land line, of course. If someone wanted to reach anyone in our family, adult or child, they would call one number and they could ask for the person they wanted to speak with. It worked for a long time. We set some ground rules for telephone use, and obviously those rules were bent or circumvented by clever teenagers. As my younger kids got into high school, started driving, and cell phones became de rigeur, it seemed more important that they get their own phones. And, of course, pay the bills for them. And eventually, like so many other families, the land-line fell into such disuse that it no longer seemed reasonable to keep it.

So yes, I have heard all the arguments for (and against) cell phones for the younger set. And I can see that kids who don't have a land line in their home are kind of at a disadvantage. Who wants to call someone's mom, just to see if Chase can come out and play? Working parents with latchkey kids need to know where their children are. Those pay phones we relied on to get a ride home, have all been pulled out of  the schools (and most other places as well). 

Anyway, last week, Chase came home from his dad's house with his "own" cell phone. I quickly figured out that this was just a discarded phone. Obviously there was no service connected to it and there was no read-out on the back panel but it did hold a charge and light up and so it seemed somewhat "real" to Chase. 

As the weekend progressed, it was obvious that Chase had gotten more and more attached to this phone. Every few minutes he would ask me if I had a cord so he could charge his phone. He would pull it out every five seconds to check and see if it was ringing or if he had a message or whatever, even when I told him it needed to stay in his pocket. It started getting a little bit irritating. But I finally overheard the imaginary conversations that I've been waiting for ever since the kid could talk: "So, what are you doing right now? Uh huh. Well, I'm at my Mimi and Boppy's and we're cooking marshmallows on the bonfire. Yup. Uh huh. You want to go for a bike ride tomorrow? Great. I'll see you then. I'll text you when I'm ready to go ..."

Unfortunately, he seemed to be ready to go on that bike ride at some point during the children's message at church. Just like any other kid, as soon as he was beyond our reach, all of those guidelines about cell phone etiquette that we had discussed flew right out the window. There he was, in front of God and everybody, tapping away at his cell phone keypad instead of participating in what was actually happening. 

Of course his mom confiscated the phone immediately afterward, and it doesn't appear to be re-surfacing any time soon. But it has got me wondering. What kind of reflection on society--and on me personally--does this show? He's only imitating the exact same things he's seen us do. 

I regularly pull my phone out of my pocket just to look at it. It hasn't rung or beeped or anything else, but I pull it out anyway. I have been known to frantically ask where the cell phone charger is, because I've left it in the wrong place again. 

David often uses the easy-tip-calculator function on his phone (I wish that function would include a disclaimer that a $3.36 tip is only a suggested amount, and you don't need to go digging through your pockets for exact change, but that's a whole different story). 

I see Chase's mom's phone go jiggling across the table every 15 seconds for 10 minutes straight because she's having an extended text conversation with some mystery person that she evidently doesn't want to waste time talking to in person. There's a "like" page on Facebook that is called something like "Texting the person next to you something you don't want to say out loud." OK, so we can quietly insult people sitting on the other side of us? Every kid on every television show (even the cartoons) seems to have a cell phone that they pull out constantly. 

You can even play games on your cell phone. I recently discovered Tetris on mine. Fortunately, it was only a trial version and I quickly timed out. Otherwise, I'd be furthering the stereotype.

It's everywhere--but we're certainly perpetuating it. 

So, while we can consider this a valuable social experiment that was not-quite-a-success for Chase at this time, maybe we ought to look at our own selves, too, and see what kind of social distortion we're all experiencing with our Blackberry Worlds. 

A few things that are bugging me this week ...

After six months of semi-regular blogging, I'm finding that even though I sometimes feel a bit "written out" and my time is more limited, I still seem to have a lot to say.

Here are a few thoughts that have been running through my brain recently, in no particular order of importance except what is coming to mind first:

I've been thinking that people react rather violently to totally random tragedies. I am not saying that the tragedies are any less real or tragic, but that we might really want to think things through before passing laws that have a long lasting effect on everyone in the nation.

Specifically, I went to visit my daughter last week, who lives by the bay. No matter what the weather, I can never fail to go down and pay homage to the lake when I am there. I was wearing a new-to-me hooded jacket, because it was chilly and windy by the water. I actually had a fairly decent hair look going when I left home in the morning, but of course I've had enough experience with damp and windy days that I didn't expect that to stick around. Even so, when I tried to put the hood up to protect what I could, I realized that I had a hood twice the size of my head and no strings to pull the sides in closer to my face.

Oh, yeah, there they were. They were attached to the inside of the hood, with two button-hole type openings and a plastic slide-thing that could anchor them somewhat tighter. I should have done this before I put the jacket on, while I was inside and could see what the heck I was doing. It was definitely not a one-handed job that could be done while I was walking along the bike path. Eventually I managed to get it somewhat gathered around my face to protect me a little bit from the wind. But, by this time my hair is totally trashed, and not only that I look ridiculously like Nanook of the North:

Obviously, I didn't need to worry about any predators, sexual or otherwise.

Now, I realize that the reason for there being no strings on my jacket hood is because once upon a time, a long time ago, a small child was trying to go down a slide while wearing their hooded jacket. The long strings on the hood somehow caught on the railing of the slide, the child went down and ended up strangled by her own jacket.

As I said, this is no less a tragedy now than when it first happened 20-some years ago. I'm sure that little girl's parents have not forgotten this awful event and I suppose they were at the forefront of the clamor to do away with long hood strings back then. I probably would have been, too, if it had been my child.

But guess what. This is an adult-sized jacket. I'm an adult. I should be able to have long, tie-up strings on the hood of my jacket if that's what I want. If I am not in total control of my faculties, it's my own fault. I'm not going to expect that people lead a crusade on behalf of my own stupidity if I decide to go down a slide.

Some day, they really ought to let people take responsibility for their own decisions. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Next item: I'm really steamed about shopping local. I'm going to have to get into that in a whole blog all by itself. Or maybe a column for the magazine. Or maybe both.

Here's another totally random thing that really got to me this morning. I may have mentioned that I'm not a fan of FOX News but I do watch the local Fox station for my local news. I can't help it. I enjoy that it's all locally produced, even though they do call in out-of-town FOX pundits that take frequent (and cheap) jabs at the Democrats. And, dammit, I really like the local news staff. They're cool (especially Al Allen).

Tim Skubick, their "political consultant" used to write political columns for Heritage Newspapers when I worked there. Maybe he still does. I think his political views are pretty much in line with the powers that be out there in Fox, New Jersey, or wherever the newspaper company is based these days. So this morning, he was on the phone (he's only been actually in the studio once in all the years I've been watching) talking to one of the anchors and as her eyes are literally glazing over, he starts talking about Governor Granholm and criticizing her "punt" when he posed her an all-important political question:

Who is going to win the football game this weekend? 

Granholm's response was something to the effect of well it will be a great game because a Michigan team will come out the winners.

Really--is this a question that a governor is required to answer? Even if he's a man? Even if he's a Republican? And whatever the governor's answer, does he or she need to get criticized for giving a totally non-partisan answer?

Get over it, Skubie.

Oh ... and lastly, I forgot to bake bread this morning for the Farmer's Market. I wonder if that means the season is really over. I'm a little chagrined over this.

OK, I'm done for this morning. But you'll probably hear more from me soon.