Top 5 Things I'll Miss About The Election Season

1. Seeing my oldest and dearest friend Todd Harris every night in my living room doing his pundit thing on Hardball. Now, granted, we don't agree on things like, you know, politics, but it was great to see him every day.

2. Putting off actual work in order to read fivethirtyeight.com in a futile attempt to quell my anxiety.

3. Downloading photoshopped pictures of Sarah Palin having sex on top of a dead bear.

4. Pondering when, exactly, John McCain decided he would sell his soul for the presidency. It would have been helpful if the people at fivethirtyeight.com could have just worked out a metric to measure this confounding turn.

5. Having this conversation with Wendy:

Me: These fucktards who support Palin couldn't accurately name 35 states on the map.

Wendy: Neither could you.

Me: Sure I could.

Wendy: One moment please. [Scurries off to the office, comes back a few minutes later with an empty map for each of us.] Okay. Have at it, smart guy.

Me: [I hit the west coast without a problem, but the stumbling begins just to the right of Utah. I move to Florida and handle the gulf states without a problem, but when I try to move above Texas, things get a little murky. I begin placing names on northern states based mostly on where I've seen a lot of snow-bound football games on television, but can't say with any accuracy if Green Bay actually sits on a bay and if there is anything north of North Dakota. I move to the eastern seaboard and realize that I pretty much have no idea what those little states up there on the right are -- well, I know what they are, I just don't know where they are. I realize that though I've been to North Carolina, I have no idea where South Carolina might be. Same with Nebraska, though I know it's next to Iowa because when you land in Omaha, you have to briefly drive into Iowa for a moment to go towards Nebraska City. I ponder Wyoming. I ponder how many state capitals I know, knowing that once, as a child, I knew them all by heart, like some kind of idiot savant. I start scribbling abbreviations and name several states MN.] Okay. I've completed the map of America and it is good.

Wendy: [Looking at my map and hers and comparing it to a map with all the correct names.]

Me: How did I do?

Wendy: What is COH?

Me: Oh. Uh. It's either Colorado or it's Ohio.

Wendy: You did it twice.

Me: Right.

Wendy: [Marking the maps and shaking her head.] Did you go to school?

Me: My map skills are tight.

Wendy: Ever heard of West Virginia?

Me: That's commie country.

Wendy:

Me: Who needs West Virginia, really?

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, they fuck you up by calling states "west" when they are in the east.

Wendy: You got 30 right. By luck.

Me: How many did you get?

Wendy: 47

Me:  That's because you lived in the South and the West.

Wendy: No, it's because I'm smart and paid attention in school.

Me: You give me a RISK board, I'll name all those fucking territories.

Wendy:

Me: Could you find Kamchatka?

Wendy:

Me: Irkutsk? Ural? I think not.

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, what I'm saying, really, is that there are no red states, there are no blue states, just the United States.

Wendy:

Me: I am all about the hope. So. Yeah.

Wendy: You're an idiot.

Comments

[SZ]

Yeah ! Can we now stop the hate and win against prop 8 ?

I would have done worse then you Tod, except that last weekend I played guess the capitol with my friend while in Arizona.

How much I remembered remains to be seen.

[Philippa Connors]

Okay, I'll admit it: last night I was peering intently at the electoral map on CNN.com and I mistook Nebraska as Iowa. *ahem* Uhhh...on the other hand, I *do* know where the Kamchatka peninsula is! But that's only because I read this crazy ass article a while back about this top secret underground bunker military complex the Russians were rumored to be building in the Urals...

So Tod, how did the "Men of Mystery" luncheon go the other day? Did you see beloved BN writer Alfredo Barrios there?

[carolyn]

wendy is the greatest. ;)

[C.A. Gilder]

Wendy: What is COH?

Me: Oh. Uh. It's either Colorado or it's Ohio.

Dude. Seriously. Dude.

I just took another look outside, and Ohio doesn't look anything like Colorado.

What will I miss about the Election season? Uhm... Uhm... I'll get back to you on that one.

Seriously. Dude. Seriously.

[bree]

dude, if you posted a you and wendy convo every day, my life would be happy. I am serious.

[bree]

oh and... a bunch of my students last year had the blank map quiz in geography and I tried to do it. I failed. bad.

[Philippa Connors]

Me: Who needs West Virginia, really?

Tod, I guffawed when I read this, as I hear this on a pretty regular basis (being that I live in Virginia).

[but in the interest of political correctness, West Virginia is a breathtakingly beautiful state and home to large reserves of coal and um, also represented by one of those east coast Rockefeller boys...]

LOL

[lucidkim]

When I was in 4th grade (in Ft. Worth,TX) it was the bicentennial - and one of the songs we sang was "Fifty Nifty" (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Fifty-Nifty-United-States-lyrics-Ray-Charles/0AE98363D8B3BD3B48256C24000F4F7B) and I still can sing all the states in alphabetical order - which makes it much easier to place them on the map if you can actually name all the states - for some reason I can never keep it straight which one is Vermont and which one is New Hampshire - I think it's best to write them to the side and have the arrows pointing in a vague way so people can assume you know more than you do.

On the other hand, I don't know if I could name more than 10 state capitals - if I'm to impress people with my 4th grade knowledge skills the conversation has to end quickly.

kim

[Mike Barer]

It's funny that there is no East Virginia, but there is a college named East Carolina.