i can't find the words

I finally registered to vote in August, deciding that my fear of being called for jury duty was moot since I now reside out of state. I got my absentee ballot last week and, being the conscientious citizen that I am, actually spent most of one night researching all of the candidates. Every single one. (Every double one, too.) So now, thanks to Google and Project Vote Smart, I am incredibly well-informed and know exactly who I am voting for. And, in the interests of a more perfect Union, I now present my St. Charles County, Mo., voters’ guide. (Hint: the ones in italics are the ones I voted for.)

President/Veep
- John F. Kerry/John Edwards (democrat): OK, this one you should know already.
- George W. Bush/Dick Cheney (republican): This one too. (Bushie has a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million.)
- Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna (libertarian): Badnarik keeps with the libertarian no-government concept, but this also means he is pro-guns, like many libertarians. Unfortunately, this costs him my vote.
- Michael A. Peroutka/Chuck Baldwin (constitution): This party is hardcore conservative. Peroutka’s platform includes, among other jaw-droppers, cutting government funding of everything except defense.
- Ralph Nader/Peter Miguel Camejo (write-in): Nader gets my only write-in vote because he is awesome and I want to have a million of his babies. Seriously, though, I agree with his platform the most of anyone’s, and that’s a good reason to vote for him. After all, a vote for Nader is a vote for Nader.

U.S. Senate
- Nancy Farmer (d): Despite her horrible adverts (read: the one where she’s in a grocery store), Nancy ‘s answers on the NPAT (i.e., issue) survey seemed reasonable, shutting tax loopholes and whatnot.
- Christopher “Kit” Bond (r): On the other hand, one of incumbent Sen. Bond’s top priorities is shutting down meth labs. He makes it sound like an epidemic.
- Kevin Tull (l): Tull’s Web site photo makes him look like an alien, and he has an ugly suit. While I would usually vote for these attributes, I don’t like libertarians who put gun issues near the top of their lists.
- Don Griffin (c): This guy is old and creepy. He says “every unborn child should have the right to bear arms.” Yet, I’m intrigued that he thinks the government should comply with “every sentence, paragraph, comma and period” of the Constitution. Sounds like a copy editor to me.

Governor
- Claire McCaskill (d): Claire’s Web site is claireonline.com. That’s more than enough for me. Actually, she beat out incumbent Bob Holden in the primary, which is impressive when you consider that he hasn’t done a shoddy job.
- Matt Blunt (r): Blunt has a page devoted to the coalitions that support him. The “Women for Blunt” section has a quote from… Melanie Blunt, his wife. Definitely an authority on his policies.
- John M. Swenson (l): Swenson seems all right, but again the guns. And concealed ones, at that.
- Robert Wells (c): Wells is interesting is that he is a black in an ultraconservative political party. He actually doesn’t seem too bad, except that he refers to his children as “”blessings”" (double quotes intended), and we all know that I hate children.

Lieutenant Guv’na
- Rebecca “Bekki” McDowell Cook (d): Bekki’s Web site has a video that you can’t stop playing, and this does not go well with her awful nickname. The Lt. Governor issues appear to be education and seniors, so I’m not siding with a democrat.
- Peter Kinder (r): Kinder’s mouth is too big for his face, and the “news” portion of his site has a “story” about his portrait now being available for download. This is a bad combination.
- Mike Ferguson (l): This guy, although he has an unfortunate haircut, is awesome. He wants to take a salary cut of more than 33 percent to set an example of fiscal responsibility.
- Bruce Hillis (c): Bruce Hillis is from Dexter, which is in Missouri’s bootheel. It follows that he wants to use the office as a “bully pulpit” and do all sorts of crazy fascist things.

Secretary of State
- Robin Carnahan (d): She is Mel Carnahan’s daughter and she can ride a pony. What more could you want?
- Catherine L. Hanaway (r): Please don’t look at Hanaway’s family photo album if you want to remain sane. The Christmas photo kills me.
- Christopher Davis (l): His bio, in its entirety: “Christopher Davis is a young entrepreneur from Springfield, Missouri.”
- Donna Ivanovich (c): I swear, these constitution candidates just get more and more nutty. She wants to return to full manual counting of ballots, with results posted in public places. Oh, and killing abortion doctors.

State Treasurer
- Mark Powell (d): Mark Powell likes to bold important words. I do not.
- Sarah Steelman (r): Sarah looks vaguely like Michael Jackson, and now I am just getting silly with my critiques of these guys.
- Lisa J. Emerson (l): Emerson’s bio features a glamour-type photo that is just the slightest bit creepy, and the classic line “I have been to 31 states.” But she has a dachshund puppy and several decent ideas.
- Chris Fluharty (c): This is mean and I’m sorry, but “Chris Fluharty is just like you.”

Attorney General
- Jeremiah D. “Jay” Nixon (d): I haven’t seen anything negative about Jay Nixon in the time he’s been attorney general. He seems to be doing a fine job, so I don’t see any reason not to vote for him.
- Chris Byrd (r): This Web page has broken links. No way will I vote for some amateur hack.
- David R. Browning (l): David Browning was hard to track down. I even called his phone number, but didn’t get an answer. I suppose calling at 4 p.m. instead of 4 a.m. would be helpful.
- David Fry (c): See above.

U.S. Rep
- George D. Weber (d): Although Weber wants to eliminate funding of space exploration programs (trés cool), he focuses on St. Louis County, which, geographically, is a small part of the district he’d be representing. Listen, George, I’m from St. Charles.
- Todd Akin (r): Akin and John Ashcroft are buddies. He needs to go.
- Darla Maloney (l): Her platform is anti-PATRIOT Act, and she uses a Statue of Liberty metaphor. Woo-hoo.
- David Leefe (c): From his profile: “The Lord’s plans eventually took him to the sidewalk in front of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.” Guh.

State Senate
- Mindy Primm (d): An unfortunate name, but her NPAT answers are so incredibly similar to my views that it’s scary. Seriously, go look.
- Chuck Gross (r): Chuck’s “platform” is really just a glorification of what he’s done in the Senate. I’d like him a little more if he’d tell us what he wants to do.

State Rep
- Tom Dempsey (r): Dempsey manages The Columns, which is a crappy event location in St. Charles. He’s also way too conservative for me.
- John Thrower (c): Apparently this guy is a mystery, as I can’t find anything about him. But, with his party affiliation, we can make a few assumptions.
- Edmund D. Staude (i): Eddie’s running as a “real person” – that’s good enough for me. And then he goes and lists highway billboards as one of his pet peeves!

Circuit Judge, div. 1
- Ted House (d): Ted’s a good guy. I met him once.
- Matthew Thornhill (r): He was a vocal supporter of Missouri’s marriage amendment (though not as vocal as the guy he beat in the primary), so I don’t like him much.

Circuit Judge, div. 2
- Nancy L. Schneider (r): I am withholding my vote here because I don’t like some of Schneider’s decisions (she likes to make examples of people who don’t deserve such harsh punishments) and I don’t know who I can write in.

County Council
- Dan Foust (r): Dan Foust lives at the entrance to my subdivision. You know which house is his because it has the world’s largest, gaudiest display of Christmas decorations from mid-November until after New Year’s Day. It’s horrendous. Also, I went to school with his son, who is a jerk. Therefore, no vote. If I move home after college, I will run against Foust the next time his term is up.

Mo. Amendment 3
This requires Missouri to spend all revenue from the gasoline tax for state and local highways. It has no net fiscal impact.
- yes
- no

Supreme Court Justice
For this part of the ballot, as well as the next, I looked at court decisions (yes, I actually read the majority and dissenting opinions) to see which justices’ views were most on par with mine. Otherwise it was kind of hard to get any info about them. Assume that justices I didn’t vote for were overly conservative.
- Richard B. Teitelman: He’s the first blind Mo. Supreme Court justice, the first Jewish Mo. Supreme Court justice, AND the first blind, Jewish Mo. Supreme Court justice. Wow.

Appeals Court Justices
(see above.)
- Clifford H. Ahrens
- Kathianne Knaup Crane
- Patricia L. Cohen
- Booker T. Shaw
- Glenn A. Norton

County Prop. 1
This adds 1/8 cent to the sales tax, to establish a community children’s services fund. The way this is worded, I am voting against “the well being [sic] and safety of children and youth nineteen years of age or less.”
- yes
- no

City Charter Amendment 1
This basically rewords the job description of the city administrator, giving him or her much more power with regard to the appointment and removal of department heads.
- yes
- no

Let me be the first to influence your opinion about putting a café in Linderman Library.

Well, maybe I’m not the first person to broach this subject, but I can tell you in simple, unequivocal language that the senior class gift is a recipe for disaster. I’m like that nonexistent politician, the one who doesn’t espouse a horrid platform (i.e., the senior class officers) or a stance that attempts to stay moderate by arguing both sides (i.e., The Brown and White’s Sept. 14 editorial).

This café — an abomination disguised as “progress” — will destroy the atmosphere in Linderman, despite what the talking press releases we affectionately call class officers will try to tell you. Here’s why:

Coffee-making is a noisy process, and relegating it to the rotunda’s basement won’t solve much. There are brewers, espresso grinders and the espresso machine, along with its milk wands. There are blenders, a cash register and, occasionally, metal things being dropped. Together, these things make a lot of noise.

The customers are definitely part of this ugly picture. The café will become a hotspot for people too social to work and too lazy to walk down to town, once the polo-wearing masses discover the 126-year-old treasure they’ve never stepped foot in before. But they won’t be studying, oh no. They’ll be spilling drinks and sugar, leaving trash all over the place and, yes, making noise.

Think about Linderman as it is. The rotunda, including, no, especially, the basement, is the best spot on campus to go when you need to hide, whether you need to study or just be antisocial. The café will ruin that. There will be people, noise and noisy people, and the resulting mess will sully a sacred location.

On Sept. 27, the class officers held a meeting with the expressed purpose of allowing seniors to voice their concerns about the class gift, and yet no one showed up. No one, including myself, had the fortitude to go and complain. I have an excuse, though: I was working that night, at a café of sorts — Jazzman’s.

As a moderately faithful barista for the past two years, I am able to tell you about the horrors of a coffee shop because I am subjected to them for 20-plus hours every week. I’m not just spouting nonsense; I likely have more coffee-shop experience than anyone involved in the project. So when someone implies that a café will not change the feel of Linderman, well, that’s just delusional.

The other thing I can tell you is that the café will not be a lovely bohemian refuge. You will not get a De’ja Brew. You will not get a Northern Lights Coffee. You will not get an Analise’s Hava Java.

What you will get is Sodexho. Sodexho is the Yankees to dining service’s Pedro Martinez, and Jazzman’s is the corporate monster’s new darling: Expect a mini-quasi-Starbucks in your beloved library. Though I’m on the payroll, I won’t deny that Jazzman’s has no soul. From the purplish, faux-modern décor to the paper cups to the god-awful uniforms, there is nothing (save for the employees) endearing about that store. The only times the place livens up a bit are when I attempt to a) juggle unfortunate food products and b) overthrow the “jazz” music with my iPod.

So, seniors, is a library-desecrating Jazzman’s the legacy you want to leave? I’m willing to bet it’s not.

I think the class officers know this, too. Though they remain outwardly optimistic about their goal of 100 percent participation, the $150,000 total they want is in fact equal to the full donations of 500 students — roughly 40 percent of the senior class. That doesn’t demonstrate much confidence in the class’s enthusiasm for this project. Nor should it; I’d donate negative dollars if I could.

I’m going to end this by imploring those of you in the senior class to keep your $5 pledges and save the money for groceries or thrifting. Don’t patronize something you don’t believe in just because it’s tradition; let the officers know your sentiments by refusing them the funding they’d like to wheedle out of you. And if you still feel the desire to hand out dollar bills, why not give them to me? I can promise you that I will never put a café in that hallowed building, and that’s a cause worth supporting.

Look, it’s 7:43 a.m. on a Sunday and I am awake. Still awake, to be more specific. I haven’t been asleep in a long time. I hardly even tried to lie down earlier tonight/this morning because I knew it was useless. You could almost argue that I deserved the lack of sleep, too. I mean, I:

- got upset at work and was anti-social, with little prompting
- continued to be anti-social and skipped a party
- was upset and pissy for three hours
- was then informed that i had my facts completely backward
- continued to be upset
- threw a fit

And that was just from 9 p.m. to midnight. So we can pretend like the inability to sleep is punishment for acting like an ass, at least for tonight.

On the bright side, I did get some writing done.

I’m enjoying this break. It’s the first chance I’ve had to sit down in a month, it seems. I mean, I spent all that time studying for the GRE, and then my car died and I had to deal with that. And then it was burgled and I had to deal with that, too. I was working way too many hours a week and spending another 20 or so at The Brown and White. I even had a couple of classes with homework and tests. And I spent a 36-hour period cramming for the LSAT. There just wasn’t any time left over, once you added in a couple of rock shows.

I mean, look, it’s 4:25 (3:25 Central) and I’m awake. Although I was up this late pretty much every night for the past five weeks, I was always doing something productive, full aware I’d have to wake up early the next morning so I could go do other things. Now, I can sleep in as late as I please (but I’ll have to get up before noon if I want to see Mo Rocca!).

Pacing Break has afforded me the ability to do whatever, which includes driving on the highway well after everyone else has stopped driving for the night. I don’t think I’ve done that once at Lehigh.

I think what I’m trying to say is that, to answer the rhetorical question Seb and I often pose, I know why people come back to St. Charles. Sure, it’s whitebread and dull, but sometimes that’s what you need. At least I do. I need to have time to marvel at the newly remodeled grocery store and time to browse the used record stores and time to drive and time to watch the telly and time to play with my dogs and time to sleep and time to go to Borders and time to listen to music, really listen to it and time to write and time to talk to my parents and time to cook food and time to shop and and and.

Thus it’s good to be home, if only for a few days at a time.

Since there must be bad news, I’m developing a lactose intolerance, apparently. Good thing I don’t mind soy.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.