Sheryl Crow
All I Wanna Do, 1994

I always just liked this song. It makes me think of mildly hungover nights driving around San Francisco, which begs the question of why I like it so much. But still…

When you put a lot of graduate students in a room together, what you usually wind up with is a pissing contest where everyone tries to prove that he or she is the busiest person in the room. Screw that. I know I’m the busiest person in the room, so I have nothing to prove.

Our front porch has a new column. Actually, it’s a restoration of an old column that disappeared sometime during the 45-year history of our house. Yes, the house is old enough that I’m speaking in terms of “restoration”.

And my mom has a new Hyundai. Which means that I’ll soon be inheriting her six-year-old, very low-mileage Buick. Which means that our garage will now house a Buick and an Oldsmobile. Which means that Mark and I are well on the way to being the old codgers we desperately so long to be.

Strangely enough, that six-year-old Buick will be the same age my 1991 Toyota was when I bought it, not to mention the same age my 1974 Firebird was when I bought it. I’m not a fan of brand new cars. I’ve only ever bought one, and it was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever owned.

Spider
Better Be Good to Me, 1981

I didn’t even know that before this was a 1985 hit for Tina Turner, it was a 1981 hit (if that’s the word) for Spider, who also recorded “New Romance”, one of the best pop songs ever. I knew Holly Knight wrte the song, but I somehow missed that they’d also recorded it.

I Dream Alone
The Graphic, 1984

That’s The Graphic, a/k/a the Triad’s own Treva Spontaine and the Graphics, via Duncan. I didn’t even know there was a video for this song, although I have a nice recording of a WUAG station ID that features it, and them, and was assembled by him.

I leave you alone now, both to dream and to decipher those pronouns.

I guess this is why I couldn’t score a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal today. There was not a newspaper of any sort to be had in the Triad tonight.

Just had a lovely visit from Sister Betty and Burqua Boy (of air freshener fame) on the Winston-Salem leg of Road Trip 2008. There was much Mexican food, much gas station shaped like a giant seashell, and much happy conversation. As it came at the end of a very long day, there will now be much coma. Good night.

Whither California? Apparently straight into the cesspool.

It bothers me that a bond referendum or anything that involves taxation in California requires a supermajority, but a simple majority is all that’s required to amend the state constitution and deny a basic right to significant part of the population.

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed watching a concession speech quite as much as I enjoyed Elizabeth Dole’s. She was obviously quite bitter, and I’m not sure if she was more pissed off at Kay Hagan or at whichever of her staffers suggested the “Godless Americans” campaign that backfired so completely.

And as I post, CNN and NBC have just called the election for Barack Obama.

It’s pretty historic, all in all. We have our first African American President, North Carolina has its first female governor, and one woman defeated another woman in our Senate race.

But whither California?

Either way, I’m going to bed now.

Apparently, early voting was not the way to go this year. On average, it seems to have resulted in about an hour’s wait. Based on these reports, I gambled…and won. The whole process took me about six minutes this morning. And it turned out one of my neighbors is a poll worker. That made me feel strangely local and at home.