Election's Hex

Twisted spinsters, noon live shots, dangling chads! There's A LOT to fear on Election Day! That's why I've cocooned myself in several hazy layers of soft news: pithy distillations of pothole operas and fawning profiles of forlorn clown fish. It's just the kind of well-lit drivel that should keep me the hell away from the polling place. Then again, I could be ripped from the studio's womb before the first precinct chief overdoses on doughnut glaze. If so, I'll try to keep my wits about me as I jostle for oxygen in Democracy's mosh-pit. If I'm lucky, I'll surface before the crush of supplicants makes escape impossible. Loiter too long in the wrong campaign headquarters and you could find yourself running the cameraman equivalent of the Mogadishu Mile. Okay, those creepy people in cardboard hats aren't gonna chase you on foot, but get caught withdrawing cheese straws from a shattered candidates' buffet table and you may be sleeping with the fishes before the first concession speech is lip-synched.

And that's assuming you make it past the geriatric terrorists who keep our nation's polling places safe from any spotlights. Forget the angry gang-banger or unhinged drifter. You're most likely to perish at the hands of a 78 year old woman hopped up on the Magna Carta. That's her in the corner, clockin' your every move through at least two cataracts. She's missing her soaps, her support hose are killing her and somewhere in those pockets is a rusty spoon her beloved Horace carried over the beaches of Normandy. Get too close to that voting booths and she'll gladly use it to carve your heart out. Don't believe me? You won't be the first photog to vanish in the clamor of Election Day - or the last. It's why the closest I get to campaign headquarters is some dusty field behind a Harley-Davidson shop. That's where I found some friends of mine gettin' medieval in  name of prognostication. I don't know accurate it'll turn out to be, but dodging airborne gourds felt safer that eye-gouging some granny from across a crowded cafegymnatorium floor.       


Now go vote for somebody.