Do we want a governor that eats kittens, or a governor that will fix the economy? YES!

So I just got a package from anivad with a couple of cool T-shirts and magnets and a couple of books and a CD and some inexplicable fliers for odd combinations of pizza and a letter with celebrity limericks and a lizard that doesn't exist, which is escaped and it's hiding under my bed. How do you catch a lizard that doesn't exist? Although it's a very good pet to have in a house that is not particularly friendly to animals that do exist.

So, you know, this one guy, right? They call him Slick Willy? Kinda fat, Southern boy, likes to play saxophones and get blowjobs from interns and run the free world during most of the 1990s?
Yeah. I shook hands with him today. Joe Waldman decided to drag me to a Democrat rally in the boondocks of Taylortucky (or, rather, begged me to drag him to one, since I'm the one with the car).
Now, the city of Taylor is way out on Telegraph, the road that goes from the country-club trashiness of Keego Harbor to the designer Jewiness of West Bloomfield to the melting pot that is my hometown of Eff Hills to the ghetto-fab town of Southfield to the...what the hell is Redford? It's unremarkable, but it marks the boundary between "the closest thing you can get to Detroit without actually being Detroit" and "YOU GOT A PURTY MOUTH, BOY". I'm not saying this from memory, but I'm looking at a Mapquest map and it's disgusting how close Grosse Point (old money WASPs) is to Detroit (no money at all).
But I digress. We ventured way out into unfamiliar territory, past the strip clubs and old motels and bales of hay (seriously) to pay three bucks to some guy for the privilege of parking in his field.
There were people holding signs outside the rally--one group of anti-abortion protestors, complete with bloody pictures of dead babies, and one group of "Jews For Palestine." I wanted to go tell dead baby jokes in front of the anti-abortion people, and Joe wanted to go yell at the Palestine people. We did neither, because we were LATE for...
...several hours of speeches by people that only a very involved union person or a hopeless political nerd would know. I've forgotten their names already. Naturally, Joe knew the names of each and every one of them, as well as their stances on various issues, political histories, and favorite flavors of ice cream. I mostly just zoned out and went "ROAR!" when everybody else did. (I did take some notes on the content of the politicians' speeches. Conclusions: Unions good, middle class good, rich people bad, Amway bad, Granholm will fix things if we elect her again. I HAVE MY SEVERE DOUBTS ABOUT THIS LAST ITEM.)
The crowd went nuts when Clinton hit the stage. Seriously, fucking crazy. People were throwing signs and lifting their shirts and screaming. I think the guy behind me tipped a bottle of water down my back. It might have been my own sweat, I can't be sure. (It was incredibly hot out.) Slick Willy gave a speech about how great of a president he was and how great the salt-of-the-earth of Taylor was and how Republicans sucked. Nothing, you know, groundbreaking, but the crowd loved the hell out of it and Joe had to stare intensely at the ground to avoid being hypnotized by Clinton's insane charisma.
He dragged me into the crowd after the speech, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man and possibly shake his hand (the touch of an ex-president can cure not only scrofula, but also polio, the clap, and acne). Elbows all over the place. "Get the fuck outta my way! I gotta shake hands with the president!" We managed to get to the front by calling out, "Presidential groupie! Make way!" (not specifying which one of us was the groupie, of course).
And then we see a full head of white hair bobbing over the crowd...IZ SLICK WILLIE HISSELF! YEAH! BILL! OVER HERE! WE'LL MAKE YOU A SANDWICH! Bill worked his way over to us through a forest of Secret Service arms, blindly flailing at outstretched hands, kissing babies and groping boobies.
And then it was over, and we stood in the crowd for five more minutes while he schmoozed backstage with more men in suits. When it finally dawned on the rabble that Bill really wasn't going to come out to see them again, the crowd began to disperse and we were left in the parking lot with the odd crazies that make up the aftermath of a rally. There was one young hippie with a cardboard sign reading, "What Would J.F.K. Do?" (answer: Marilyn Monroe), and a six-pack of Lyndon LaRouche Youth singing "George Bush is a mental case" in choral rounds. Joe went around scavenging politicians to pounce on while I gathered conspiracy pamphlets for light reading.

I shall cap this entry off with a thing what I got tagged for by Erin.
Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that reflect who you are or what you believe. (Also there's a bit about tagging but fuck that.)

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Pride and Prejudice

I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?
Ronnie Shakes

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), Heretics (1905)

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel.
Matt Groening (1954 - ), The Simpsons