Soup in Normal entries

A couple few months back, give or take a couple or a few, I was reading this article about local elections. It said, in summery, or it said to me, in summery, lo these couple few months later, that we (Americans, I assume, as he was talking about American politics) focus our limited attention on presidential races and just sort of check local boxes or vote a straight ticket without having any idea what the candidates are fixing to do. He didn’t say it, but I will, Democrat does not mean liberal and republican does not mean conservative, the assumption is like assuming the individuals playing for the Green Bay Packers are all from Wisconsin.

Dude went on for a few pages beyond my attention span but basically posited (clumsy word, sorry) that we step on our own best interest with the details while pretending we’re looking at the grand picture, or we throw our hail Mary before confessing, or … no, I was about to go into pissing on trees and not having the bladder for the forest or some such nonsense.

One of the recounts that, I think, are not happening, is here in Michigan. When I left Michigan in the late seventies and for decades afterwards, it was solidly in the Democrat column, or, in recent graph-speak, a blue state. The first year I was back there were shocking things on the state ballot, among them a bill to hunt wolves for game, a bill to bust unions, specifically the UAW and SEIU, and a bill to get the Canadians to pay for building a new bridge from Detroit to Windsor. The latter was voted down because the state doesn’t like Snyder (I might be spelling it wrong, but, I think, perhaps, it’s him who spells it wrong) A conservative, a republican and the guy who made Gateway and moo cow boxes famous. The unions lost collective bargaining rights and wolves lost the right to live. The latter was overturned the following year but is being reconsidered again.

Even with a recount and the assumption that a recount would show Clinton the winner, it’d hardly be a blue victory. For all the dislike of Snyder he got a second term two and a half years after I got here. Without bitching about popular votes vs electoral college and other national trauma, Michigan Is slowly reddening from a local level. I actually liked the idea of the bridge, it was not voted down on it’s merit.

I expect national politics to get good and god damned weird for the next four years. But, you know, I always kind of expect that. Local ones; we need to take culpability for. I’ll admit I’ve voted often for people and offices I had no clue about. I almost have to here, in Oregon we got voter pamphlets the size of phone books outlining every measure and candidate in both objective terms (what the hell the deal was) and subjective (what proponents and opponents said about the issue or candidate). Here it takes a lot of effort and still leaves gaps in understanding, much more effort to be informed here then the effort it would have taken to be uninformed in Oregon. I know it sounds like I’m bitching but I was shooting for appalled, I just wasn’t using my sights or aiming very well.

Even the governor is too large a target. This little town has more red tape than some continents. Every bit of red tape has a guardian and an oversight committee and I haven’t a clue who most of them are, but I voted for some of them. According to dude, the guy who wrote the article, I am the enemy. I’m embarrassed to have enemies as unformidable as me, as uniformed as me, as abstractly raging in their indifference as me (wow, I became a collective in the middle of that).

My phone took a shit yesterday. My eighteen day old phone took a shit in my pocket, and all the kings horses and all the kings men only managed to to swipe it’s memory. Traditionally that’s not what’s swiped after a shit. I think if I type Fuck Best Buy one more time I get a lifetime achievement award. But it’s not just best buy, and I hated them before they couldn’t do anything. Around 9 last night after fighting biting kicking and scratching with Samsung, Best Buy and AT&T I got AT&T to promise to send me a phone under warrenty. Um, it’s processing now, should be here in a couple days.

I made a little speech exiting best buy. I don’t do that often, when I do, though, make a speech with righteous indignation, I’m usually loud and public and rated R for language (and possible nudity and violence). I was fairly mellow and normal volume with only a handful of customers in earshot when I said something to the effect of “I’ve been here over an hour and I’m leaving dissatisfied with an eighteen day old phone that doesn’t work, apologizing for your inability to fix or exchange is below the least you could do. A referral to the Wizard of Oz would be more helpful than a shrug. I am under warrenty. I bought here in good faith. I’m leaving with a phone that doesn’t work.” I know I repeated that phrase often, as often as new customers came within earshot.

I could explain the deal but I’m tired of it. There are people starving in the world, people without shelter or health care, my phone is of marginal significance in the face of those issues. Best buy and Samsung and AT&T aren’t feeding, sheltering or providing health care either. With the exception of the guy who is sending me a warranty replacement, it’s as if Best buy were running a soup line but all the bowls had holes in the bottom and when someone says ‘My bowl doesn’t work’ they shrug and say there’s nothing they can do. Dramatic analogy I know, but it’s because my inability to make a phone call is almost inane, the analogy is to get across how very little they are willing to or able to do. A phone that can’t make calls or text or take pictures or surf is as useless as a bowl with a large hole in the bottom; it serves no function no matter how good or well intended the soup is.