Poetry jam, Indecision 2004 party @ Spill, Raine & Jake, and assorted political bits

Drove up to LoDo (Lower Downtown Denver) around 2000, found my destination, drove around a bit to find an open meter, and fed it $1.50--enough to cover it until 2130, half an hour before parking became free. In my wandering to find a) an ATM, and b) change, I noted that Spill wasn't too populated yet, then stumbled across the Common Grounds coffeehouse, where a poetry jam was going on. I bought a Harvest Chai to a) warm up and b) get change for the meter, then sat through the rest of the jam (until 2100 or 2130, I think--and met one of the guys, who told me about an upcoming slam on Sunday.) I then headed back to Spill--on the way, finding an Onion box! and picking up three copies--where I tried a new beer (Shilley's? Something like that) and hung out the rest of the night, watching the results roll in--sad, VA stayed red--until it became repetitive nothing, piddly crap about the local elections and predictions and blah blah. I also saw quite a bit of the Six-String Samurai, only without sound, so I'll have to watch it for real sometime--it looks really cool. (Speaking of looking really cool--the ambient lighting in the bar, behind the stretched ceiling-level canvases, the wall behind the bar, and the photographs inset in all of the tables, were all color-shifting simultaneously--very nifty effect.)

Sometime late in the evening I was standing near a group of people, and the cute girl of the bunch, Raine, introduced herself to me, and we chatted about politics and motorcycles (she has a 2004 cruiser, forget what), and with her boyfriend (I think) Jake, politics and geekery. (Raine has an interesting political philosophy regarding this election: She's in favor of women's/gay/abortion rights, but voted for Bush--figuring that if Bush wins, he'll get abortion illegalized, hordes of 20-25-year-olds will commit suicide, and there'll be open revolution. I figured something along parallel lines--if Bush is reelected, he'll just keep fucking up worse and worse, and the Dems will win by landslide in four years. (I also pointed out that if Bush wins, there'll probably further reduction in gun control, and the revolution will be well-armed!)) We hung out until they kicked everyone out around 02, and I headed back to the hotel.

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covielle: As long as there are kittens in this country, something can be done.

Via notjaffo: A few misconceptions about the significance of this election.

Via pendragon: Same-sex marriage bans winning on state ballots. CNN predicted all but Oregon to pass the amendments, and so far as I'm aware, it has passed in Ohio, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Michigan. Fuckers. Oregon, by contrast and as predicted, was reasonable, decent, and human, and voted it down. Scratch that, every goddamn state passed it--the above, plus Oregon, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, and Mississippi.

(Hehehe.. the Conversatron's surprisingly amusing open-thread take on the election. :D)

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Pleased to note that the electoral callouts are currently 254/252 Bush/Kerry instead of the earlier 269/whatever CNN was predicting.. Ohio takes all, yo.

Zhoost a fyoo linx.

Kerry has conceded, with votes still uncounted. Live at 1pm ET.

xiaoshira fires up a debate on statistical/sampling/polling/reporting issues.

pedrozangl points out the irony of Bush's heavy use of 9/11 imagery in his reelection campaign, and the overwhelming results for Kerry in DC and Manhattan.

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And now for some awesome, non-election-related tomfoolery, vinz_klortho offers up Lords of the Rhymes. "Well my name is Gimli / I’m a fucking dwarf / I been slaying mutherfuckers / from the south to the north."

More soon, dear readers.

(Yeah, hungry. I've had two mini-KitKats and two mini-packs of Whoppers, having run out of the hotel this morning w/o the nice free continental breakfast.)

Kollision! Spider on Voting! Kitten-pixie! Janet Reno dance party!

Hehehe.. from Shauna's friend Andrew McAlpine:

The Electoral... Kollision!
In the event of a lot of lawyercratic counting bullshit, the two kandidates will fight each other to the death with shivs carved from the preserved femur of Paul Revere. Their right arms shall be tied together with the rope of American unity, and they shall be placed in the electric Kage of Kongressional power. After listening to the national anthem (as rockterpreted by The Fucking Champs) they shall stab at each other until one is dead from loss of blue blood or a mortal wound to a major organ. If neither kandidate is dead within four minutes, the ocelots of Justice are to be loosed by the current house majority leader, tearing both kandidates to shreds and giving the nation a good khuckle.

Awesome. Via jwz, Warren Ellis's Spider Jerusalem, On voting and elections in general. (Warren Ellis is an awesome dark comic/graphic novel artist/author, if you don't know.)

Via sylvie, quite possibly the cutest kitten-pixie ever.
(And, uh, a dance party at Cornell. With Janet Reno.)

Oh my non-denominational deity, y'all are posting fiends today. 15 posts per hour, give or take, and almost none of them from communities.

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Oops, forgot to post this 2.5 hours ago. 25 posts since then!

Poor young turnout, plan for America, and Erin on bigotry

Apparently ten percent of 18-24-year-olds voted. That is pathetic. (Maybe 17, someone else says. Still pretty pathetic.)

*snrk* Proposed course of action for America:


blistex: What the hell is wrong with you people?*
* the many, many voters who voted overwhelmingly in favor of stomping on civil rights for gays in all 11 applicable states