featherynscale | William Gibson, voting, book club.

I had William Gibson dreams last night. Man, I hate that guy. Mostly I hate him for building such interesting cities, and making such dull things happen in them. I hate him for misusing the aesthetic. And I hate him for Johnny Mnemonic. (Rollins was cool in the movie, though. Gibson can eff up a lot of things, but nobody can make Rollins look bad.) But anyway.

Somehow, it was election day today. In my brain, elections happen in April. I'm a little confused as to when I am. I voted anyway. If it should turn out that these were not real elections, and the real elections are the first Tuesday in April, like always, I suppose I'll vote again next week.

Druid book club was lightly attended last night (Peter B. Ellis' "The Druids"), but still a wretched amount of fun. (At one point,

saffronhare said, "You know, I read this book, but I was not as critical as you guys. It's good to be in a room with people who are smarter than me."

agrnmn told her we weren't smarter, we were just bigger dicks. Saff concurred, or was at least willing to allow that we were more likely to wave our dicks around.) Any book club meeting in which a fair amount of time is spent parodying the author is a good use of my time, I think. Also, I learned where Transalpine Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul were. Note to authors: if you are going to talk about countries that do not currently exist, it is okay to include a map. Nobody will confuse you with Tolkien. And we uneducated bastards will thank you for it. KTHXBYE.

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Our MO guy had an I Voted sticker on, so it is a shared hallucination.

Good to know. I mean, there were a lot of people who seemed to think they were voting at the polls this morning, and yet. These things seem so real sometimes.

Kansas has some elections next week. Which reminds me: I haven't gotten my mail-in ballot yet. They moved my voting location again -- back to the same church it was the time before last. Really hating how the location keeps changing.

My voting location changed from one church to another, apparently more rabid, church. Hrm.

We must be the lucky few, then. Ours is in the 'clubhouse' of a duplex community just down the road. No crazy church people, just an deaf or uncomprehending row of well-meaning old ladies.

We should all volunteer to be election workers and show up in corsetry or kilts, etc. That'd be welcoming, right?

I'd be up for that. I'm pretty sure

druidevo knows how one gets to be an election judge. :)

I mean, it might cause folks to make The Face (tm) if we showed up as pirates, but hey.

That'd be all right, too. I do also have some fairly welcoming clothing that is not pirate-based.

I am not sure they let you pick where to work, though, or if you can work as a group. I know you're not allowed to work at the same poll as your spouse, but I'm not sure if that's the only restriction.

I picked up some "How do you become an election worker" brochures at my noon meeting today. Let's see if they help.

Heroic as always. :)

I still miss having a voting location of the national guard armory (when I lived at the Chaos Cube). Now *that* qualifies as a good place for a polling location in my book.

As long as my voting location continues to be a church -- any church -- I'm going to do my best to vote by mail (or early, at the county election office). It's a matter of how I feel about separation of church and state, you know?

But I hate the constant switching of voting locations for what (it seems to me) it does to access and participation. There are many things about which I think people need to seek out their own solutions, but having to hunt down their Sekrit Voting Lokation is not one of them.

Okay. Getting off my soapbox now.

I agree with you completely about churches not being appropriate as polling places. I appreciated the satellite office they opened at the old Metcalf South mall for the last election. For this one I may or may not make it to the election office for early voting. I'll just have to see what the week brings.

I have had the exact same thoughts. When I found out my first voting location was a church I was not pleased. For good or bad though, my new location is the Quindaro Community Center, chain link and barbed wire fence and all.

Why so down on Gibson, man? He hated the Johnny Mnemonic movie as much as you did. Thats why you haven't seen Neuromancer as a flick, because got his rights back and sat on them.

He always lets me down. The worlds are great, the people can be interesting, but the story is always dumb, and the endings approach a Stephen King level of hoke. He has all of these great bits and can't seem to string them together into anything readable. So he's off the list. (With the exception of The Difference Engine, which I intend to read any time now. That one, being a partnered effort, and being in a different milieu, might be okay.)

Dude, am I the ONLY one who liked Johnny Mnemonic?

I mean, c'mon, the VHS tape sleeve had a little cellophane window so you could see that Johnny's head drive actually had a tape backup!

They were southeast of Gallia Comata, of course. Doesn't everyone know that?

:-P

William Gibson, voting, book club.

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Granted, I haven't seen it since I was fifteen.

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