Someone I know shared a crass joke online elsewhere. The joke involved a hockey team, a "hippy chick" and hygiene. My comment of "douche" was interpreted as an indictment of my friend's character. People see things as they are wont to do. Elsewhere someone else shared a photograph of a mattress up against a wall, vertically, that had been spray painted to read "NO GOD NO MATTRESS" (along with an anarchy symbol) to which a feminihlist had ammended below, "no goddess".
Today I participated in local democracy. It was a local election for the school board and a judge. The newspapers probably said to call a number before going to the usual polling spot but I didn't bother to do so. The regular polling location (an Xian church catering to the local Asian population) was not open but there were two women sitting in the shade, fanning themselves, waiting for would-be voters like myself. They had a laptop which they used to check to see where to send me, which ended up being just down the road. I walked the blvd until I found the right church.
A news van was parked in the lot, doing nothing. Two people waved signs in the air for one of the candidates, standing at the perimeter of the point at which it is legal to do so.
There was scant shade from some oaks overhead. It was hot as fuck out.
Inside the church there were lots of people I don't know (and two I do), more waiting to get their ballots then actually voting. There were three women holding the ballots at a long table, each with a sign dividing the alpabet into thirds. Being on the wrong side of the divide's cusp, I waited in the designated line of six or seven people, watching the other two ladies doing nothing.
There was a giant flatscreen television at the front of the church, beside the altar. The space of the church was not very large. Some time passed without the line moving at all. I tried to imagine what the services at the church were like, what flavor of Xianity was peddled there, how many of the church-goers would regularly drive across the street to go to the family style fried chicken restaurant.
Eventually the old man who was holding up the line was shuffled off to the auxiliary table of even older ladies off to the right and the line began to move.
When it was my turn in the line, I handed the smiling woman my ID and she scanned the pre-printed voter registry and quickly found my name, below my mother's. Noticing the red plastic cup of peppermints beside her I tried to grab one but instead pulled out one massive clump of them. I made a face, depositing the candy back in the cup. The gum-chewing woman in the middle at the table handed me her cup of candy but I politely declined.
The voting booths were not booth but rows of card tables with dividers along the back wall by the entrance. A few people sat there, marking their ballots. The scent of stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air.
Choosing one of the many empty spots, I sat down and made my selection (voting against the pistol-packing judge who's soft on murder but hard on drugs) by coloring the ovoids in carefully with the ball point pen on a chain. When I stood up the chair I was seated in fell over with a bang as it did not slide easily on the carpet.
I walked over to the woman standing beside the ballot collecting/counting machine and tried to hand her my ballot. She directed me to feed the ballot into my machine myself, so I did though it took me three tries before it went all the way in. The woman had a row of stickers on ready to hand out and was upset when I refused.
And yes, this was the most exciting thing that happened to me today. That and getting locked out of the house while mowing the lawn.
After walking home from the church, I removed my clothes and let the air conditioning dry the sweat to my skin. Sometime before it got dark out I went to go lay down. I was still sweaty from walking so did not get into the sheets, just lay on top. The excess of sugar I had consumed earlier cooked up some strange dreams. The one that I remember, that was going on just before my awakening, involved some people I had not seen in many years and some people I had never met. We were walking in a city and then found ourselves in a room where we began to drink and carouse. Someone found a photograph of me jumping into a body of water below a cliff. After some time in the room I noticed that the street outside was visible through the window and I wished to go there. Someone asked if I was sure and I repeated my certainty, trying not to refrain my irritation at doing so.
The wall melted away.
I asked how that happened and my friend said to me that there was never a wall there at all. I said yes there was too a wall, how did you make it go away? And was again informed that there was no wall there at all. We walked for a bit more until I found myself in a large upper room filled with more people I have not seen in even longer (and again some of whom were alien to me) and everyone was waking up from a long night's sleep. The photograph from earlier was tacked to the wall, below where I had slept. At this point my skin in real life contracted uncomfortably (the air conditioning being set to automatically become more cool at certain intervals) and the dream was over.