I think Barack Obama is avoiding me...

I voted today. If you know me, it will not surprise you that I voted for this guy:

Barack Obama.

He was "my guy" from the start. I voted for him for US Senate, and I voted for him for President of the US of A. Over the last few years, that is...not both today. I realize that the motto in Chicagoland is "Vote early and vote often," but I only voted for this guy once today.

On May 2, 2008, Barack Obama came to my neighborhood. In the heat of the primary season, he held a town-hall meeting and gave a speech in Munster, IN at Munster Steel -- 3 miles from my house. I could not attend. I was not on the approved list. Although I was a high school friend of Lansing Mayor Dan Podgorski, I have no clout. Lansing takes "municipal home rule" so seriously that local officials do not run as Democrats or Republicans but instead have their own fake made-up parties. I cannot keep straight if Mayor Pod's Community Action Party more closely aligns with Democrats or Republicans, so he may not have any real clout for me to exploit with my non-existent clout. I have heard it said that a local politician is someone whose deepest darkest secrets keep them from seeking higher office -- so maybe I do have some clout after all, Dan. Still, I live close enough to have walked to Barack, but I was not invited to attend.

On Halloween 2008, Barack Obama came to my neighborhood again:

I got five pieces of candy!

I got a chocolate bar!

I got a quarter!

I got Barack!

Wicker Memorial Park in Highland, IN is also 3 miles from my home. My daughter plays in this park regularly. Mid-week last week, the Obama-Biden campaign announced that they would be holding an event in Wicker Memorial Park on Halloween night starting at 6:00 PM. No costumes allowed.

Local Trick-or-Treat hours were from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM. The retired busybodies who set such rules have ruined Trick-or-Treat by scheduling it to start just after they finish their Early Bird Specials -- you know, so they can be in bed by 7:45 on Halloween...on the first, they've got to be at the bank by six in the morning to cash that Social Security check. The extension of Daylight Savings Time has double-ruined Trick-or-Treat by putting this already-too-early event into what any reasonable person would think of as the noonday sun.

Now, 3 miles from my front door is an historic event -- Obama's "closing argument" for the presidency. I should go. My wife should go. My daughter should go. By some estimates, 40,000 people did go. Even if I didn't support Obama, even if my O-baby's Obama O-Mama didn't support Obama, we should attend this historic event in our neighborhood -- an historic event starting just before it gets dark enough to make Trick-or-Treating the least bit fun (or even tolerable for those poor kiddies under twenty pounds of monster fur on a seventy-something degree Halloween).

Not only would we all have to de-costume and de-makeup before we could possibly go, but given the parking options, we would have to walk half of the distance to the rally. To make it there by 6:00, we would have to start getting ready by about 4:00 PM -- so, no Trick-or-Treat at all. Not only would my daughter not get to Trick-or-Treat in her non-Charlie-Brown ghost costume, but we would not be able to pass out the twelve hundred dollars worth of candy we have to buy every year because some years we get twenty kids and other years we get fifteen thousand. Plus, I wouldn't be able to tell if my house was being egged by the candy-less neighbor kids, or by the guy down the block with the McCain-Palin sign in his lawn.

So I ignored the call of history-in-the-making.

At the last moment, the Obama-Biden campaign moved the rally forward to 7:30 PM.

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Fuckers.

And now, some shameless grandstanding in pun form:

• GObama! Yes we can! For More Years of the Bush Agenda? No we McCain't.
• Biden's opponent is Palin comparison.

Next time: More hi-jinx, and the next event of the Fall Eating Season.