Comments
by Scoper...
Caution! This Is Another
Damn
Presidential Election
Piece!
The good news is it just
might bring an end to this sad circus once and for all! For I am, through
means I'd rather not divulge (ed. Note: flea market), in possession of
an actual, working crystal ball (with stand!) It must have been lying around
for years, and Windex wouldn't quite remove the haze, so I ran it through
the dishwasher. Seems to work fine now.
To be honest, I started using
the crystal ball on Election Day in the hopes of going to bed early. No
chance. It kept showing various TV network logos on top of a metronome
pointer, moving back and forth, back and forth. That wouldn't have told
me much, except for the audio. (The ball isn't that old, and there's a
sound card and speaker in the stand.) Voices I couldn't identify kept saying:
"Time zones? What time zones? And: "The Greenwich Observatory has no controlling
legal authority."
Still, it piqued my interest,
and I thought it worth sacrificing some sleep to see how things played
out inside the eerie orb. I forgot to take notes, but here's the timeline
as best I remember it:
November 8: Still no winner,
recount ordered in Florida. Bush's lead shrinks. Headline reads: Thousands
of Palm Beach Voters Troubled by Irregularity. The ball must mean, "voting
irregularities," so I change the batteries.
November 9: Some elderly
Palm Beach voters complain they were forced to buy magazines from Publisher's
Clearing House before they were allowed to vote. Totally confused by the
"butterfly ballot," they head to the bingo hall where each plays 10 cards
at once. Elsewhere, homeless voters run out of cigarettes.
November 10: Democratic operatives
formulate a plan to somehow get Ralph Nader into a Corvair, but no collector
will sell. Recounts of recounts begin. The crystal ball image changes to
a chessboard endgame, the pieces stalemated.
November 11: Republicans
go to court to try to stop Democrats from going to court.
Big-screen TV's are set up
at various Veterans' Day events.
November 12: Hard-liners
of both parties attend church, pray for the Lord to smite the wicked. Neither
side is smitten; apparently it's too close to call.
November 13: Recounts of
recounts continue. Psychics begin prognosticating about who people really
intended to vote for. Some Florida elections boards begin counting the
number of vote-counters, and the number of flower designs on the wallpaper
in the coffee lounges. They can't get an accurate tally; it goes to recount.
November 14: Politically-oriented
Internet sites crash sporadically because of overloaded chat rooms.
November 15: A new Weekly
Reader poll of America's schoolchildren shows 83 percent prefer "eeny,
meeny, miney, mo" to the current selection process.
November 16: Tragedy at sea!
The ship carrying Florida's absentee ballots is lost somewhere in the Bermuda
Triangle.
November 17: The ship reappears,
docks at port of Miami, but the ballots have mysteriously disappeared.
They're found by a Cuban fisherman, a distant relative of Elian Gonzalez,
but are too waterlogged to read.
The crystal ball gets a little
fuzzy here, but here goes. Sometime in December, the election is thrown
to the House, which deadlocks on choosing a winner. The job then falls
to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who says he cannot serve because of recurring
bouts of biliousness and torpidity. Sworn in January 20: the President
Pro Tem of the Senate, 98 year old Strom Thurmond.
Gore goes into seclusion.
Bush says: "God, I need a drink." The crystal ball rolls off the stand
and shatters on the floor. I wake up, place my hand over my heart, and
vow never again to eat pepperoni and anchovy pizza.
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