Sunday, August 27, 2006

Drunken Devils

So today I will confess I am a terrible houseguest after having fallen asleep during a riveting Sierra Club documentary on the Coal Industry. And redeem myself with a receipe for deviled eggs, which I made from scratch and brought with me. We will conclude with a new Southern Strategy.

First, you should be really irate at all these coal-is-clean-domestic-energy & America-needs-energy-from-coal advertisments all over the Washington D.C. Metro platforms. And I'd imagine the buses, though I rarely venture above ground during daylight in our capital, all those Republicans around. Right. Coal as the new clean energy?! Help fight this PR campaign and I will reward you with a martini hidden in a deviled egg.

Okay, so you won't get the entire martini. You take eggs for deviling, add cracked black pepper, sea salt, ginger, vermouth, vodka, cranberry mustard, and garnish with buttermilk. Plate clears every time. Which rounds us to the new Southern Strategy for the Democratic Party.

A belly stuffed full was not the culpret behind my inability to close my eyes, which I shall blame on long hours seizing water, champagne, and Channel #5 from flying Americans. What was for eating? Some different kinds of "non lettuce salads," mini vegetable muffins, a large supreme pizza from a local parlor, and a spectacularly bad organic brown noodle dish. And something with zucchini. Nibble. Nibble. Covertly scrape into compost pot. At least there was watermellon for dessert. Nice that a lot of it was local grown, but an appetizing dish should be a campaign skill. Good food ups the return rate of first timers, and you can bet there's adequate chow at any Republican function. At least I had the hidden booze.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Streetcorner Timeshares

So today we try again to save the world, or at least Anne Arundel County. We arrived with ironed campaign shirts and mini bottles of water to wave at rush hour traffic on a street corner near Bowie. I had decided to be particularly adventurous for my third sign waving and wore platform white sandels. All for the message of course.

The streetcorner was not unoccupied. And oh were we not welcome by the Pentacostal church that squatted there regular. They twisted their white buckets and smoothed down their heavy black clothing in just that way. Black under the summer sun. Oh really now. Must have been with their brains half hard-boiled that they ran through the selection of human propts they dragged out for rush hour.

Token homeless guy claiming to need bus fair to Virginia was one thing. You expect that. We could barely stomach the second act, and remember, I was a pagan in a crowd of Catholics. She was a little old woman. They escorted her out by the elbow, while she smiled that vacant and uneven red lipstick way that cried for a fleecing. The Pentacostals took her across the street and I lost track of her location.

Shortly there after, as the light to the four lane divided highway going north turned green, the campaign signs around the streetcorner slapped against the sidewalks. As the cars accelerated through the intersection and cleared away, I lowered my sign in confusion. Pulling off my sunglasses, I spotted our campaign manager storming across the street.

Standing on a line in the middle of the four lanes was the little old woman, in her black dress and holding out her enourmous bucket at the on-coming cars. One gets the impression that Catholics outside the anti-abortion crusade are pretty laid back. But even I could hear the dressing down the Pentacostal minister got from over a hundred paces. They put the little old lady back behind the curtain. For that evening at least.