The SoapBoxers

[Note: this is intended to be a humorous parody of the relatively short delay in declaring a winner in the Oregon senate race. It is not intended to be an accurate representation of the state’s election process.]

As we trot toward the festivities of Thanksgiving, the diligent election workers in the state of Oregon continue their thankless job of counting the votes. We expect a winner to be declared in the senate race any day now.

TCO caught up with Joe Saycanusi of the Oregon Secretary of State’s office.

TCO: Joe – Do you mind if I call you Joe? It is now 2 weeks past election day and we’re still waiting for a winner in the Merkley/Smith Senate race. What, exactly, is causing the delay?

JS: Well, TCO, we are experiencing multiple issues. As you know, all voting in Oregon is done through the mail. This year, we have had a bit of a West Nile epidemic, and this has really put a strain on the herd.

TCO: Er, what’s that? Do you mean that the mail in Oregon is actually delivered via pony express?

JS: Of course. What else would we use? Oxen are strong, but they’re pretty slow. We had a second health issue as well – several of the horses came down with constipation. Believe me, when a horse is waiting to take a crap, you’re just going to have to wait it out. Really, I don’t see what the big fuss is all about. The new congress doesn’t start work for a while yet. As long as we’ve declared a winner by then, everything is cool.

TCO: Well, Joe, that’s very fascinating. Thank you for enlightening us.

TCO: We were also cable to catch up with a precinct captain in Multnomah County. We are pleased to speak to John Morgan.

TCO: Captain Morgan – how are you feeling this morning?

CM: Aye, a bit hung over, to be honest. We’ve been doing this bloody counting for umpteen days now. It’s enough to drive you a bit mad after a while, so I went on a bit of a bender last night.

TCO: I believe that you had a bit of a problem with some votes in one of your precincts. Can you explain what happened?

CM: Well, the middle of last week, our cleaning people came in at night to scrub the place down. Unfortunately, when our counters got in the next morning, they discovered an absolute tragedy. Our permanent record of the vote counting had been destroyed – the blackboard was scrubbed clean! Even worse, the ballots had been thrown out with the trash!

TCO: Wow. That’s horrible. Yet, you are expecting to have complete results …

CM: I know what you’re thinking. No, we didn’t just make up some numbers. We grabbed our boots and headed out to the dump. After two days in the dump, we recovered every single ballot. Then we went work, removing chewing gum and taco sauce from the ballots. It was hard work, but I am confident that every single vote has been tallied correctly.

TCO: Wow, that’s quite the ballot tale, captain Morgan. That’s it for this installment of the news. Join us next time as we oversee the counting of ballots in the Alaska senate race.

This is geared more toward moderates rather than partisan voters.

Let’s say that you care about five issues (listed in order of importance)

Issue 1: Candidate A agrees with you. 90% of congress is on your side.
Issue 2: Candidate A agrees with you. 80% of congress is on your side.
Issue 3: Candidate B agrees with you. 50% of congress is on your side.
Issue 4: Candidate A agrees with you. 30% of congress is on your side.
Issue 5: Candidate A agrees with you. 20% of congress is on your side.

Who should you vote for? Candidate A, right? After all, candidate A agrees with you on four of your five most important issues, including the two that are most near and dear to your heart.

Wrong. You should vote for candidate B.

Issues 1 and 2 are safe, since congress overwhelmingly agrees with you. Conversely, issues 4 and 5 are hopeless for you at this point in time, as they simply don’t have enough support. The one issue where your vote makes the largest difference is issue 3 – which is teetering on the brink of having enough congressional support.

Keep this in mind the next time you vote. Which issues are teetering on the brink?

I got a call from a telemarketer last week. It was one of those calls where you can chop the interest rate on your credit card. I decided to tell the caller that they were in violation of the “Do not call” list and that I would refer subsequent calls to the attorney general’s office – so I hit the button to talk to a human.

Then the call got weird.

I hear a woman in the background. “Can we get some soy sauce with that? A lot of soy sauce. We both like soy sauce. Can we get like ten each?”

The conversation goes on like this for a bit – clearly she is using her cell phone to order lunch while she is supposed to be answering calls. Eventually, my one year old daughter makes a sound in the background. The call realizes what has happened and focuses her attention on me in the only way possible.

Yep, she hung up on me. Hopefully this was one of those calls that is being recorded for training purposes.

A literary icon of our generation has passed away. The great writer Michael Crichton ended his battle with cancer at the age of 66 on November 4.

Crichton is best known for his masterpiece, Jurassic Park. As a bit of a dinophile, this became one of my favorite books. Over the years, I read many other Crichton books – Congo, Sphere, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, and Next among them. Crichton also wrote Twister and created the television show ER. I await the final Crichton novel, now scheduled for release on May 4, 2009.

Thank you for everything, Michael, and enjoy your eternal reward. You deserve it.

Did you stay away from the polls because you didn’t think your vote counted? One effect of the apathy caused by the electoral college is the down-ticket effect. If you are a Democrat in Texas or a Republican in California, you are correct that your presidential vote would not have swung the state. However, your vote may have changed the results of local races – and this can also have an impact on you. In my state, a candidate in one race currently holds a lead of 6 votes.

If you don’t like the electoral college, there is a way to fix it. Contrary to popular belief, a state does not need to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. The state has complete control over how their votes are awarded.

There is currently an effort underway to functionally abolish the electoral college. A number of states have formed an agreement to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. This will only occur once enough states have joined to ensure 270 electoral votes (meaning that if a candidate won the popular vote and had this bloc of states give him/her their electoral votes, he/she would achieve an automatic electoral college majority.. Until then, the states will continue to assign electoral votes via the current method.

Read more at this web site:
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index.php

Contact your state legislators regarding this.

I can’t believe I forgot this one. Announcers who interview people, and miss a good chunk of the game in the process. If you want to interview a guy between the action, that’s fine. But I don’t want to miss an at bat because of the interview.

I heard an interview a few months ago. I want to say it was Mike Schmidt, but I might be wrong. Anyway, the guy be interviewed would always wait until the end of the play before he would answer the question. That is awesome – everyone should do that.

And we are off!

Today is the first day of November, and that makes it the first day of National Novel Writing Month. The goal is 50,000 words towards a novel captured over the thirty days of November. So how do you start? If you want to be part of the official challenge, then visit NaNoWriMo.org. Create an account and start writing. That site is filled with helpful suggestions and provides a word count tool as well as goodies if you succeed.

There are many parts of writing to address, and there is no specific order to do them in. Each writer will find this or her own comfort zone. What is the type of story (short story or novel), genre (romance, adventure, science fiction, historic), characters and title? Sometimes choosing one item creates one of the others. Choosing a genre, say adventure, drives character names such as Rock or Hunter. You may not even know what kind of story you are writing until you get into it. Last year, I ended up with a romance, definitely not what I started with.

This year, I am attempting a science fiction effort. I have a good idea about character names and personalities from ideas I have had in the past. Now I have to put those personalities together. I do not have a complete plot idea, just a rough outline in my head.

Now the idea is not to get a complete novel written, although that would be great. The idea is to write. The distractions will be significant. There is work, family, an election and all of the other every day events that keep us from writing. So the true challenge is to push all of this aside and write. I don’t suggest sacrificing your career or ignoring your children, on the contrary, use your specialties to make your story more complete, talk to you kids about what you are writing, they may ask the questions that give you your breakthrough. Every experience can lead to an idea.

I do not just encourage you to write, I also encourage you to let us know how you are doing right here on TheSoapBoxers.com. The only limitation is to remember that this is a family friendly site.

50,000 words is about 1667 words per day. Good luck!