Mary

There was no waiting at our polling place.  Also, there was essentially nobody on the ballot.  Okay, so like 6 pairs running for President, and around 8 people running for other things (4 running unopposed).  And there was a non-binding referendum to tell the state legislature whether or not we want universal health coverage in the State of Wisconsin.  We spent quite a while looking for sample ballots last night because we couldn't quite believe there would be so little on it and figured the ones we were finding were incomplete. 

At some point, because I've been thinking about it a lot lately, I want to take a little time to post about why it is that the more I hear about the anti-same sex marriage amendment bills, the more angry I get about them.  But not right now because my VB controls are crying at me to be arranged properly on my form. 

I had a dream last night that I was in bed with Obama. No, we weren't doing anything. Except I was explaining to him that even if he did become the President, "The most powerful man in the world is just a political distinction."

Apparently renting a home in Wisconsin doesn't actually make you a resident of the state. Because "renting is temporary, so a lease doesn't prove that you live here even though a documentation of a mortgage would." What a fucking bitch.

Fortunately I can take 2 hours off work another day and drive across town with any number of other documents I do have, but didn't have on me, which in no way prove that I live here, and use those to establish residency. Who would have thought that the documents they require for a drivers license are different than those they require to prove residency for registering a car, and in addition make no fucking sense.

Maybe instead of just offering tax incentives for home ownership, which just shift the demand curve, and don't actually make homes more affordable, we could help people achieve the American Dream by not making them feel less like people for not "having a home."

Yeah, and incidentally, I have tons of documentation that would make it easy for me to get a drivers license in Illinois, Oregon, or New York (if those states have such fucked up rules)... in spite of not living in any of those places. In spite of not ever having ever lived in New York.

Edit: Okay, so actually on closer examination of our papers we don't seem to have a document that will allow me to prove residency for a drivers license, since our pay stubs don't have our address on them (which is evidently required for them to work), and the only utility bill we have received thus far is in Josh's name and not mine... because a utility bill on a rental home is so much more permanent than a lease on a rental home. I've got 10 more days before I'm in violation of the law for living here 60 days and not changing my drivers license over. If I wasn't so pissed off, that would probably be funny.

Edit #2: And as if things didn't seem nuts enough before, get this: they mail your new drivers license to your home address... which really begs the question why they can't just take my word for it and figure that if I am lying about my address I wont ever actually receive my drivers license, so it's okay.

Today is National Climate Change Day. I wish someone had told me before...

I often wonder how different America, and the world, would be right now if Al Gore had been elected won the election in 2000. I finally got around to watching "An Inconvenient Truth" in December, and currently I am reading "Earth in the Balance," not that I wasn't plenty worried about the issue before. I think of the section about Easter Island in "Collapse" regularly, and the illustration it gives of our dependency on a healthy environment. For those of you who haven't read it, a 1 sentence synopsis of Easter Island is that Easter Island supported a large and prosperous civilization, but they depended heavily on the large palm trees for building many things including their sea-worthy canoes (deep water fishing making an important part of the food source) and the fertility of the soil to grow crops, so after they used the trees to extinction and their top soil became depleted, they were trapped on an island which could no longer support their population. The Earth is a much bigger and more complex system than Easter Island, but it is itself an island. We have no where else to go. And this is increasingly relevant as we are increasingly able to affect the environment on a global scale. If we screw up and don't take proper care of Her before it is too late, we could find ourselves in pretty much the same situation as the Easter Islanders.

So many of the other issues facing our society seem so trivial to me when compared with the climate crisis. 9/11, the war in Iraq, even the rising cost of health care, the gap between rich and poor, education, and a woman's right to choose--what do any of those issues really matter if we can't leave a healthy environment to our children and grand children? I wonder how different the world would be today if we had spent the last 6 years concentrating as a nation on things that actually matter... instead of fighting a pointless war half way around the globe.

So what makes a legal signature a legal signature, and a legal name a legal name?

My understanding is that my legal name is, for pretty much all intents and purposes, the name that I changed my name to on my social security card and drivers license after I got married. But it's not exactly that because it's really that I'm "using" my married name and didn't actually get a court order to actually change my name.

My understanding is that my legal signature is the consistant way in which I make the mark of my choice, and the only aspect of it that really matters is that I make it consistantly. The fact that I sign my name Mary Peter Middendorf rather than Jane Doe III (or a collection of uniteligable scribles scribbles with a unique shape, like most people) only matters because that's the consistant mark I choose to make.

But today when I went to vote they gave me a hard time. You see, on the voter registry, I am listed in print as "Middendorf, Mary E.P." (Mary Elizabeth Peter Middendorf wouldn't fit on my drivers license and I registered to vote by saying "yes" at the DMV when they asked me if I wanted to register to vote). However, as I said, I sign Mary Peter Middendorf. Well, the people at the polling place seriously hassled me about this, even though the signature for me that they had on file was exactly the same as the one I made. They did let me vote, but I had the impression that they felt like they were doing my a favor and they said my voter registration had to be updated so it matched my signature. WTF? Shouldn't my voter registration be under my, you know, normal legal name? And shouldn't I sign my normal legal signature? Don't they keep them both on file together for a reason? They also hassled Josh on this same issue--who ever had entered his name had him down as "Middendorf, Joshua G. Peter", and they hassled him for signing what looked to them like "John Middendorf" (but I'm sure matched his signature on file since his signature always looks like John Midden-scribble).

So would somebody like to explain to me either what my name is, or how I'm supposed to register to vote, or how I'm supposed to sign when I vote, or what a legal signature is, or what I should do to complain about having incompetant poll workers? Argh.

I'm seriously frustrated by this. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that having 4 names will cause endless headaches for the rest of your life because nobody else can handle it!? Argh.

Edit: I called and reported it. Will anything come of it? Who knows. But it really is inappropriate for them to hassle people like this without a legitimate reason, even though they did eventually let us vote, and I feel better for having had my complaint noted and recorded. If anyone else had/has problems, the nation wide number is 866-OUR-VOTE. This hotline seems to be a joint effort by a number of organizations, including NAACP and People For the American Way, as part of their efforts to monitor the fairness of this election. I'm glad there are organizations out there doing this, and I'm glad Josh and I finally got off our lazy asses and made a donation to People For the American Way last night.

I had a dream last night that President Bush pulled me over and gave me a $500 ticket. Not for a traffic violation, but just because he could.

UK, Calif. make global warming deal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801/ap_on_sc/blair_global_warming

Okay, it doesn't sound like there was actually any substance to the deal, but I approve of a high profile Republican Governor trying to go over Bush's head in this regard. Arnold is officially my favorite Republican politician, for the exceptionally little that's worth.

Where was that man when 2 years ago? Where was that man 6 years ago?

I want to vote for him.