I remember in november

I personally just want to see DeWine go away forever - that's all I really showed up for. I try to be attentive to matters, but the one thing I studied up on didn't appear on my ballot- the speed/red-light cameras - I'm strongly for those, for more of them actually, and for a $10/gallon tax on gasoline and a per-bullet tax of $10 to be applied as well - these last few are just dreams you understand - wishes, not actual ballot items. Nothing of merit is really up for debate this year outside the weird nuances of the new county government. People are up for election, and this is a matter that I find to be foolhardy and needless. The various bureaucracies that govern matters, they're not elected, the politicians that ostensibly govern them, they are elected but there's not much any of them are going to do or are even particularly empowered to do. Legislative rafts. My district is gerrymandered into democratic complacency, my new state senator is not going to be substantially different than my old one... But I do what I'm supposed to do. For Ohio.

I drove to the capitol over the weekend - true story, walked all the way around it, found the weird inconvenience store that only takes cash, found the church of scientology, found the statue of Rhodes - dressed for business, ready to command the execution of KSU students... Kill enough students & they'll name half the state after you. And on the route down you know, there's a lot of miles of actual-true-real WASTELAND. These are miniscule nothing-towns, nowhere cowtowns served exclusively by big business. Terrifying to think about - that is, what it would be if you looked around and saw the Taco Bell & the Walmart & the Truck Stop as the only actual employment opportunities. Terrifying to imagine these people making up their minds about how my life should be lived. But they get to. On the radio out in these interstitial nowheres you hear all about families - they're silly for this idea of family out there, in the WASTELAND - and this is some kind of crazy code for a whole raft of immoral attitudes and sinister agendas that kind of radiate from 20th century american protestantism - which, if you've not noticed, is a pretty sinister amalgam of cruelty, prejudice and the like, hostility. And that's the world outside the city - bleak.

And here's the huge church where I go to vote. Weird right? I wondered what it would be if the polling station was in some less ubiquitous religious institution, something more exotic and thus more obviously wicked. I wonder how we'd all take it then.

Everyone there is very nice, they offered coffee & stickers and smiled at me so early, long in advance of my first cup of coffee, long before anything of consequence could occupy the day.