Idaho’s holding its primaries today, so I vote again for the first time in what? A week? Considering the expense, it seems like combining the primaries and last week’s issue would have been a wise choice. Maybe then there would have been something better than the 11% turnout of last week. Like maybe the 27% turnout expected this week. Hooray for democracy inaction.

Having come from California, voting in Idaho is interesting. There are various polling places and you can vote at any of them. I assume somebody actually checks to make sure you don’t vote at all of them. If, like me, you’re a democrat, you get to do write-in votes for most positions. Now that’s a sign of a healthy two-party system, isn’t it? Maybe if they published a voters’ guide so that we actually knew what the various candidates had to say about themselves, more people might get out to vote. At the moment, you just base your vote on word of mouth and the attack ads that fill the op-ed section of the local papers. My preferred method of choice is to vote for whomever has the lowest tally of attacks.

Update: I voted, now what? My votes were cast in ignorance (see lack of voters’ guide above), so I chose the first candidate listed in each choice. Way to go, voting by alphabetical order! As a democrat, half the positions were write-in, so I voted for myself. Hopefully I’ll win. I’d really like to be whatever it was that I chose. County commisioner? County clerk? County coroner? Whatever, I’m sure it will be exciting and I will fulfill my duties with all of the thought and effort I put into my write-in campaign. That is, none whatsoever.

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The baby robins are looking and sounding more and more like baby starlings every day, and I think it’s too late to drown them in the pond. If it is true, and I have raised three starlings, maybe I can train them. Get them to lead the wild starlings to the cats. Race wild starlings through windmills. Outfit them with razor-lined outfits to cut the wild ones to shreds. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

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It’s getting worse. I now have three baby robins, most likely between 9 and 16 days old. They’ve got some pin feathers and a little fuzz, but really need to fledge so that I don’t have to keep staring at the skinny old man necks and the golf-ball bodies. The latest one showed up last night under a different tree, so I assume it is a cousin. So, are these runaways, or did a bigger sibling drop-kick them out of the nest? Or could it be the work of the damned starlings? I prefer the starling theory since I consider starlings to pretty much be at the root of all evil here on my compound (now that I’ve got the chain link fence in front, it’s a compound, not just a little house on the prairie. By next week I should have the gate up, so I can start releasing the attack-pomeranian. Oooh!- scary!).

Where was I? Oh yeah, the birds. Now I’ve got a shoe box full of little grey beasts with bright yellow beaks and I’m starting to remember the carnage of last summer. Dead baby bird bodies floating in the pond. Dead baby birds on the swimming pool cover. Dead baby birds throughout the back yard. I didn’t think much of it back then, but my trees rain death. So, is it the damned starlings, or is this just nature? Effing nature. Speaking of nature, I have a raging headache today, so don’t piss me off or I’ll cry on you.

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Okay, time to head out for Montana. I’d rather give up my left nut, but my wife says it’s not an option. Farewell, fine Idaho. Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow. And hopefully the annoying little birds’ll still be breathing. And maybe somewhat less bald. The birds, not me.

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I’ve become a new father again. Hopefully the little buggers will fledge quickly and fly off, though, because feeding them every half hour is getting to be a drag. Good deed, my arse; I should’ve left their scrawny mutant baby robin butts on the ground for the cats. They are cute, though, in a potato-bug kind of way. Almost bald, with a few pin feathers on the wings, some light fuzz on top of their heads and bright yellow beaks. They’re built like grey golf balls with wings and distended necks. hmmm . . . maybe it’d be easier to photograph the useless little things rather than describe them. If I get up anytime soon, I’ll try it. Maybe.

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It’s Friday, and I am looking forward to a non-relaxing weekend. After work, I drive to Montana to help the in-laws move. Saturday I come back and finish a screen door, mow and put up the new gate. Hopefully sometime in there the pool pump will have been fixed, so that the four hours I spent yesterday rebuilding all of the plumbing will have been useful. Anyway, back to work — gotta get out early.

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. . . and like pretty much everyone else out here on the ‘net, I figure I’ll post a link to the DHS’s great new civics flash cards, where you, too, can see our government in action as they strip freedom of the press from the first amendment. That was just an oversight, right guys?

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I live in a city of 17,000 people. Yesterday, we had a school bond vote, which was approved by 73% of the voters. All 1,900 of us. Yep, a whopping 11% of us either actually cared enough to vote or even knew that there was a measure on the ballot. While I am sure there were a lot of people who decided it didn’t matter one way or the other whether our kids have classrooms, there are probably just as many who had no idea there was an election. Until yesterday morning, I wasn’t aware of it. C’mon, folks, put out a voters’ guide once in a while, please? Okay, enough grumping, it’s time to look at the news.

I see we’re making friends with Libya. It looks like freedom passed out from heat exhaustion doing all that marching throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. Took democracy down with it as well, I’d say. What exactly makes this crazy oil-rich dictatorship more loveable than Saddam’s?

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When feeling too crappy to do anything else, read spam. Had I just deleted as usual, I would have missed this gem (actual url in message removed):

“Hi, may i present you freshest hot stuff? 😉
I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (URL to actual crappy site here) are bad.
Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..”

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Nothing witty to say here, folks, so move along! I got the wife a new rototiller, which was great fun. She hasn’t lost a foot or anything yet, but I’m placing odds on this weekend . . . It’s finally the end of the work day, and I need to go mow. Oh yay. Or maybe I can go see what all the banging was upstairs with the boy-child. This morning he filled the air in my office with whiteboard cleaning fluid while keeping up a running commentary on something or other (number of blinks? Whether his heart was beating or resting? What it sounds like to say whatever particular word he was saying at that moment? Makes me long for the good old days when we were afraid he had a speech disorder and might never talk . . .). This was followed up by a count past infinity “infinity and one . . . “.

I dream of a quiet weekend.

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