candidates postpone election

Citing the need to visit affected areas and have their pictures taken in emergency shelters and amidst the rubble of homes and businesses destroyed by one-time hurricane Sandy, contenders Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agreed in a session closed to the public to postpone the election until after their campaigns had gathered enough disaster-related footage to make them appear worthy of the presidency. Rather than use his massive personal fortune to help make a difference in the lives of persons affected by the frankenstorm, Romney held a canned food drive in towns not affected too severely by the tropical depression, exploiting the generosity of middle class American stranger so as to make himself appear as if he were a man of the people. Meanwhile, the sitting president was kicking butt and taking names in states all up and down the eastern seaboard, handing out tax dollars in the form of emergency assistance and not even flinching when New York's mayor Bloomberg told him haughtily to stay away from the island of Manhattan.

Unbenownst to both Democrat fear-mongers and Republican war-mongers, the 2012 election proceeded as scheduled, the American people deeming it unnecessary to remind the political duopoly that the date for elections is defined in the Constitution. “Postpone the election?” said Morris Plains, New Jersey, resident Samwell Gupta-Smith, whose house was still power three days after the storm had passed “Are they that fucking stupid?” “We heard that Obama and Romney wanted to push this thing back,” said underemployed materials specialist Egon Valorbound Goldsmied, of New York's Lower East Side. “Which would be all well and good if – and only if – we all happened to live in whatever fantasy land those two seem to inhabit. But we don't, so, on November 6th, my wife and I will walk through the mud and the muck to our neighborhood polling station and vote for a third-party candidate.”

Mr. Goldsmied's sentiments were echoed by nearly everyone with whom we spoke: a women's group in Connecticut showed us a letter they had written to their former political overlords in Washington in which the corrupt officials were kindly told to go fuck themselves and to not let the door hit their posteriors on the way out; a group of freshly-minted teenage voters in Indiana – after realizing that neither ass nor pachyderm would address the real problems facing our nation – celebrated the candidacy of Dr. Jill Stein by occupying an abandoned lot, planting therein a community garden, and turning their cardboard Romney signs into compost; a men's bridge club in Florida dismantled the enormous “O” (for Obama) that they had helped bolt to the entrance sign of their nursing home, replacing it with a recyclable banner supporting governor Gary Johnson, the candidate for the Libertarian party. From the shores of the Great Lakes to the tasseled fringes of the bible belt, citizens from all walks of life shrugged off the stifling mantle of politics-as-usual and made the first cautious steps in the lifelong effort of taking their country back – by smashing their TV sets to pieces and bravely casting their ballots for a third-party.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

opinions not voiced

Preferring the proven tactic of smile-and-nod over direct confrontation or the voicing of his personal opinions, thirty-something whorphan Wellington Erasmoss Denyels of Shelter Bay, Connecticut, emerged from the belly of the beast largely unscathed. “Fuck,” he said aloud while driving back home through the early fringes of frankenstorm Sandy, his whirring wiper-blades the only things breaking the trip's growing monotony, before his inner monologue kicked in, saying: 'I'm glad no one pressed me on my political views, and I'm so happy that I didn't have to explain my shifting religious philosophies and say just how little I think Jesus is guiding the steps of my life.'

Thinking back to the night before, Wellington shook his head and forced himself to laugh as memories danced across his mind's eye – the woman asking if his wife were sitting in the chair next to him even though he was not even wearing a wedding band and there was no indication he had brought a date; the tattooed, self-proclaimed street minister insisting on pointing out the salient features on his chopper-style motorcycle while making sure to mention after each breath that “Jesus saves”; the condescending ease with which nearly everyone in attendance threw around the name of their religion's god while subtly sniping at each other and touting their own virtues and achievements to anyone within earshot.

Deactivating his vehicle's cruise control so as not to ram a slow-moving car that had lurched suddenly into his path, Mr. Denyels breathed a sigh of relief in the knowledge that he was leaving the South and that he would no longer have to drive past house upon house whose owners had chosen to cement six-foot-high Romney/Ryan signs into the ground mere feet from the edges of busy, narrow byways. He shuddered when remembering the fact that a majority of North Carolinians had but recent amended their state's constitution to restrict the rights of homosexual Americans and to define marriage according to the societal and religious rules of a Bronze-Age desert people, thus exposing their innocent neighbors to the harsh punishments of YHWH, the god of the ancient Israelites. His patience nearly shot and his gas-tank approaching empty, our whorphan exited somewhere in northern Virginia, to have a stretch and to sniff the air for hints of moral repression, of which there were thankfully few.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)