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Highlands Today

Political Picks Were Nearly Perfect

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By Norm Cukras | Highlands Today

Published: November 8, 2008

Well it's finally over. I didn't think the day would ever come when the signs would come tumbling down. Actually I missed a lot of the Election Day excitement by voting early, but we did drive by our precinct just to see how much of a line we would have had to wait in. When we got there, there was none. Precinct Sheriff Jim Smith, who was featured on the front page of our paper a week or so ago, said they had a large turnout but it was more of a steady flow, which kept the lines down.

With the results in I find that I scored pretty well. Of the 20 choices I had to make I picked the right one 18 times. That's a batting average of 0.900. Not too bad. Although I can't help but wonder how often a judge is not retained in office? However I did bat 1.000 on oval darkening-in and I didn't leave even one hanging chad. Joe Campbell would be proud of me. And I'm sure that Jimmy Whitehouse would have been proud of his protégé.

Decisions, Decisions

Just because the election of the century is over doesn't mean that we no longer have decisions to make. We've had to make them since we were "that" high. One of the first major decisions of my life was whether or not to go with Coca Cola like most of my friends or with Pepsi. Pepsi won. Even then my frugalness was beginning to emerge and Pepsi offered, "Twelve full ounces - that's a lot." Then there was the choice of Yum-Yum or Dan-Dee potato chips, a little more difficult choice since they both came in the same size bag. But I opted for the Dan-Dee. The other brand seemed like it was baked longer and had darker edges. And there was the ice cream v. sherbet and Lassie v. Rin-Tin-Tin. The list was endless. But no one ever said it was easy being a kid.

And it always seemed like you were always being challenged by your buddies. "What! You favor Batman over Superman? Superman can beat him everyday in the week." Yeah, but the Caped Crusader had all those neat gadgets and the Batmobile; besides, Superman hung around with a girl.

Kids of today aren't exempt from decisions either. They have to make major choices like: Mac or PC, Verizon or Alltel, or PlayStation 3 or the X360. Then there is always the challenge of defending the choice of wanting to be a wizard like Harry Potter or a dragon rider like Eragon.

I've Been Found

Some months ago I mentioned that a friend of mine came home from a brief vacation only to find over 800 e-mails waiting for him. I remarked that I hadn't had 800 e-mails since Al Gore invented the Internet. Well that claim didn't last long. Apparently the scammers have found me. Currently I am getting between 400 to 600 scam-mails a day.

Not too long ago a group of some bodies wanted me to send them money so I could become a coupon counter now they want me to be a paralegal, a physical therapist or a movie extra. What they don't seem to understand is that I don't even want to work let alone pay somebody to find a career for me. People who don't even know me want to whiten my teeth. Then there are those who want to help me with my failing finances, or they want me to send them my old gold or to buy their revolutionary new pet nail trimmer. Heck, I've successfully been trimming our cats' nails with a tried and true human fingernail clipper for years.

Thank goodness StratoNet has a filter that screens out the greater proportion of these Interads before they fill up my gigamoungus hard drive. With a few flicks of my mouse I can send 200 of these messages at a time from the dark side into a cyber black hole.

You know we've listened this whole year to the politicians tell us how they were going to make our lives more wonderful yet not one of them said what they were going to do about this electronic mail mess. At a very minimum a law should be enacted that would allow us offenders to be able to respond to anyone sending us an e-mail. Or at least be given the option to "return to sender."

I guess it's against the First Amendment rights of the pesterers to be restricted from sending messages. But what about the restrictions imposed on us when we can't tell them how annoying they are?

Overheard

Overheard at the checkout counter: With Christmas decorations and advertising appearing right after Halloween, Thanksgiving is becoming the forgotten holiday.

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