Listening to the radio in my car yesterday, it occurred to me that you'd never know what "great events" are taking place out in the world of international politics from reading this journal. Years from now I may look back on this time as the period in which the South Asian nuclear crisis began. I'm actually fairly well attuned to the news, and an amateur historian and map-reader to boot. Somehow, it just doesn't come up to often here.

Today is an election day in California and besides deciding if I want Jerry Brown for my mayor, I have to choose between the various beige and gray governor candidates (and deal with the temptation of registering a protest vote for medical-marijuana advocate Dennis Peron, running as a Republican in this first ever open primary) and I have to do my best to defeat the ever-more regressive initiatives that appear on our ballots sponsored by pseudo-grassroots initiatives designed to keep political consultants rolling in the green.

the scene of the crime is the ballot box
and people who vote from fear
--Robert Hunter, "Possession" (Zero, 1997)