gym

I went to the gym after work; no cardio, just weights, and I didn't take notes at the time. And I am reminded of another reason I don't use the branch near my office that often: they don't have a coat rack (as the one I use near Times Square does), and putting an actual coat into the locker with my street clothes and daypack gets crowded.

( approximate, from memory )

Election Day

Tomorrow (Tuesday, 2 November) is Election Day in the United States.

If you're eligible, please vote. I know it seems hopeless sometimes. But when in doubt, vote against: I am not exactly delighted by the Democratic candidate for governor in this state, but the Republican is a Tea Party billionaire whose history of sending out bestiality porn is one of his better points. (A friend looked at the polls and is voting against them both, which also seems reasonable.)

I don't know whether the Murdoch paper headlining that the Democrats will be in trouble tomorrow is just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt and trying to demoralize their enemy, but let's not let them make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also: there are a lot of offices and sometimes ballot questions in most places. You may not care about all of them, but that doesn't mean none of them matter. Go in, vote just for state senate, and leave, if that's how you feel about it.

If anyone is looking for suggestions in New York:

I'm voting what amounts to a straight Democratic ticket, though I may fill in the ovals under "Working Families Party" instead [1]: Cuomo for governor [2], both incumbent Democratic senators (as far as I can tell from here, their opponents' campaign strategy seems to have been "maybe the incumbent will drop dead and/or be caught with an underage prostitute"; they've certainly done nothing to make me think of them in terms other than "don't give the Republicans the Senate"), diNapoli for comptroller because he seems to have done a good job for the last four years, Eric Schneiderman for attorney general because I liked him as my state senator, and the Democrats for state senate and state assembly because if the Democrats manage a useful majority of the state senate [3] the state legislature might actually get something done up for a change, and that "something" might include same-sex marriage.

We have two city ballot questions, both of which were well described by an article I read a couple of days ago: you have to be both intelligent and deliberate to come up with things this confusing. The first is doing something with term limits, changing them but not for incumbent members of the City Council; Bloomberg seems to have again decided he's in favor of them, as long as they don't apply to him. I may abstain on that. The second has seven different changes, as an all-or-none deal; I'm voting in favor because one of the seven will reduce the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot for city offices.

If you're a conservative or a libertarian, please think before voting: small government may be one of your values, but some of the Republican candidates this year seem to be opposed to paving the roads, and others want a government just big enough to fit in our bedrooms. This is a special case of my "when in doubt, vote against," above. I'm a socialist: I almost never get a chance to vote for someone I actually agree with.

[1] This has to do with details of New York election law; a party that gets at least 50,000 votes for governor has an automatic ballot line for the next four years, and may hold primaries for specific offices, instead of having to circulate petitions for each candidate it wants to run.

[2] If Cuomo is far enough ahead in the polls, I might vote for the Black Panther instead. Just because. (I think he's using the label "Freedom Party," but the only party name that means anything here is the "Rent Is Too Damn High" party, which is a guy with one issue.) The ex-madame [4] is taking advice from the same Republican operative who is advising Carl Paladino, which is all I need to know.

[3] Useful majority as opposed to the mishigoss we had some months ago.

[4] The best moment of the campaign: she threatened to sue a New York Post columnist for referring to her as a "hooker," asserting that there was no evidence she had been a prostitute, only promoted prostitution. I don't know what if anything has come of that, but my thought was that he should offer to run a correction: "I apologize for referring to $candidate as a prostitute. She was actually a pimp." Or possibly just run it, without contacting her people first. It's a matter of legal record: she pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution. (I am omitting her name not to make a point, but because I don't remember it, though it's also true that I don't feel like giving her the publicity.)

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