oh, sugar!

You don’t know me.

You, with your smug smile of self-satisfaction as you catch a glimpse of my Obama pin and come up to me at a voter registration table, or standing outside my polling place on local election primary day.

You pick me out of a crowd of five Obama supporters, all noticeably more mature than me, to ask (pointedly), “Why do YOU support Obama.”

What do you think I’ll say?

“I just want change,” and then get distracted by a butterfly or pretty flower or a little puppy walking by? (Well, I might be distracted by the puppy, but only because he’s so cute!)

Nope, not this Hopemonger. I might be under 30 (and some would argue still look like a college student, although I disagree). I might even be laughing and joking around with another volunteer, having a little too much fun registering voters. And I’ll definitely be wearing my jeans, flip flops and Obama tee shirt, of course.

But do you really think you’re going to corner me into sputtering off some random catch phrase or answer with absolutely nothing to back it up? Yeah, good luck with that.

I have a very personal story behind my reason for supporting Senator Obama, with a strong policy position to back it up. I’ve researched my position very carefully with the other Democratic candidates, too (and let me tell you, sometimes the female candidate doesn’t always get it right on the feminist issues).

Maybe if you ask me nicely, and there aren’t too many other people around, I’ll even tell you why I support Senator Obama enough to canvass in 5 different states, knock on hundreds of doors, make several hundred phone calls, plan events weekly, and donate more money than I can afford.

Or maybe I’ll see that smug look on your face as you approach me, thinking you know who I am, and decide to surprise you and tell you anyway. You know, just for funzies.

Go talk to someone who doesn’t have a brain in their head and a degree in rhetoric who just loves to talk. I have voters to register and volunteers to sign up, because this is a real movement. I don’t just say I support my candidate, I actually do it.

What do you do?

You know, this actually happened to me at a voter registration table recently and the response I got back was a shocked, “Oh, great! Good for you.” I love surprising people speechless. It makes me laugh.

Apparently, some guy named Jesus Alvarez thinks my face looks dumb.

Of course, this came in to my work account so the full email was “Webmaster, your face looks dumb.” I saw this pop up in the little Outlook notifications box in the corner of my desktop while I was in the middle of answering another email, and I actually burst out laughing. I couldn’t control myself! I had to stop typing!

I don’t know why. I mean, the dude just insulted me, that’s not funny! But there I was, laughing my face off at work over a brief email from a random stranger. Of course I’m pretty sure there is no “Jesus Alvarez” per se. It’s just spam.

But I don’t get it. What is the point of spam like that? They’re not asking me to buy one of their replica watches, or share a massive amount of money with me if I would only give them my checking account number. They’re not even offering free porn or anatomical enhancement. Weird. What do I do with something like this? It’s just plain mean!

<Delete>

Next up on the weird, random email trail: An informative email titled “Hillary Clinton” from Peggy Graber, who tells me “A vote for Hillary Clinton means never having to say you’re sorry.” And that I had better start praying, because when Barack Hussein Obama gets into the White House, we’ll need all the help we can get.

Or something like that.

Except this one was not from a spammer. It was from a real woman named Peggy Graber who is a Legal Assistant at some law firm in Kingman, Kansas. She also donated $898 to the Clinton campaign. (Must’ve found my email address on one of the Obama forums or something, who knows.)

How do I know this? Because I googled her, of course. And the HuffPost’s FundRace 2008 page came up first, along with a page to a petition supporting Senator Clinton seeking to have Florida and Michigan fully seated at the convention. They feel “that the DNC has unfairly sought to advantage an unqualified junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, by words and deeds, throughout this presidential election.” Right.

I won’t mention the fact that Senator Clinton is also the junior Senator from New York, since “junior Senator” is just a technical term for the newer of two Senators in a single state. I’m just sayin’.

What to do with this email from Ms. Graber…

<Mark as Spam>

But the weird emails keep coming. Some spam, some not. These were the two most interesting, but there are more waiting in the wings, I’m sure.

Anyone get any good ones lately? Spam or otherwise? (Please say I’m not the only person in the world getting two line emails from complete strangers, castigating my choice for President. Please! Why am I such a freak magnet?)

So, Congress is ready for their summer break (as am I, except that I don’t actually get one), and also ready for another set of pro forma sessions for the duration.

Why pro forma? Because when Congress is officially out of session, Presidents, including Dubya, can make recess appointments to circuit courts, etc. WITHOUT APPROVAL FROM CONGRESS.

Scary right? It’s enough to give you nightmares, thinking about all the uber-conservative judges that could be snuck in under cover of night, completely unvetted. And we know how this administration likes to appoint friends. Whoever is closest in proximity at that exact moment in time, and has some semblance of a law degree, can suddenly be nominated and appointed to the 9th circuit court of appeals.

Lord, help us all!

Pro forma sessions basically consist of a member of Congress calling the session to order, announcing there is no business, and adjourning for the day, every day, for the entire “recess”, so that it can’t actually be considered a recess. And therefore a recess appointment cannot be made.

Sort of a “forget you!” to the President, who has made many scary, unwise choices during his almost two terms in office. I get why they do it, and if I was a member of Congress I would be first in line to conduct the pro forma session myself.

What is amazing to me is that We the People, have finally joined forces with our elected officials in the legislative branch of government to say that we don’t trust our President. At all. Publicly. (How embarassing for him!)

We don’t even trust him enough to make a tiny, unnoticed-by-most-of-the-country appointment to a local court system in the middle of nowhere.

Wow. If that doesn’t say “You suck at your job”, I don’t know what does. The Administration may criticize these pro forma sessions, but I personally think we’d be even worse off than we are now if we didn’t have them.

Carry on.

Um, no. Ew.

Seriously, who does this even happen to, but Katherine? For real.

A couple of guys drive up to her house in a beat up, rusty old truck and one of them hops out of the back (don’t get me started) and asks, “Wanna look at my chicken and seafood?”

He has a huge freezer sitting in the back of his truck. Assumingly filled with chicken and seafood, although who knows. In the back of his truck. A freezer. In the back of his truck.

Her response is really irrelevant (although I think it was something like, “Oh, no thank you.”) because seriously… the larger question here is- what was he doing driving around Dumfries with a freezer full of chicken and seafood in the back of his truck anyway?

Can someone tell me if this has happened to them, or if they’ve heard about this phenomenon before? I’m dying to know if this is a common occurrence, or just someone’s brilliant get-rich quick scheme.

Man, that story was my moment of Zen for the day. Usually I’m the freak magnet!

Ah, the drama. I remember it, although not as well as I used to. I guess some things never change though, because I still seem to find myself surrounded by it.

Last night- perfect example. I’m tired already from canvassing all weekend in NC and then driving home, and then going to work bright and early on Monday morning before heading in to DC for tutoring. My regular student asked if his girlfriend could come work with us since she was never assigned a tutor. Innocent enough. She’s worked with us before, she’s smart, and stays focused the entire session. (Plus she tries to keep my student focused, too, which never hurts.)

What no one told me was that the girlfriend in question also dated my sometimes-student a while back, and of course my sometimes-student also happened to be in the same room as us. Boys being boys (and still in high school at that) comments were being made from across the room that I didn’t understand until afterwards (not having the background info until later).

Of course a 20 year old boy cannot let such comments go untouched in front of his new girlfriend, so this led to an argument where my student was asked to leave tutoring for the evening. Sigh. So now I have the girlfriend and the sometimes-student in the same room, and my other student yelling that he’s going to wait around outside until my sometimes-student leaves after tutoring.

Frick on a stick.

Normally, my sessions don’t go like this. We do some Physics, some English, some Civics, and then everyone heads to their respective homes. Fine. But trying to talk rationally to someone who is thinking irrationally is pretty much impossible. So now what?

Of course I take it upon myself to wait around outside to talk to my student until his ride picks him up, in order to (hopefully) prevent a fight. There’s some jawing over my shoulder between the two, but crisis is seemingly averted as my student gets into the van and heads home, the girlfriend following suit.

Oh the drama of high school. And college I guess. And apparently young adulthood. I know I have my fair share of it, too, but when we do outgrow this stuff? Do we ever? Does it always have to be such a struggle? Life is hard enough without making it any harder on our own.

Do I really need to spend my Monday nights breaking up fights between two normally well-behaved young men? Really?

On a related note: the evening had some good drama as well! My sometimes-student showed me a certificate of acceptance to Hampton University! I almost cried I was so proud of him! And I could tell that he was proud of himself, too, although he was too tough to show it. And my student that disappeared, remember him? He showed up after tutoring, too, right as the almost-fight was dispersed. He’s taking his SAT’s this weekend, and then the test for GED the following weekend.

I’ll be spending next Monday AFTER tutoring working on that with him. Yes, perhaps all the drama is worth it afterall in this case.