Al Franken and some fascist (I assume) are running for Senator in Minnesota, and as someone who had the election results hours ahead of time, thanks to Nate Silver and 538.com, I find the idea – the very concept – of not knowing who the senator is in some state that I have no association with to be frustrating and infuriating. However, since I’ve been to Denver International Airport three times and counting in the last two months, other things that are infuriating have sort of taken a back seat. No longer!

I don’t know pretend to have any idea who is going to win the Senatorial race in Minnesota. I would have assumed that Big John Studd would be involved, but he had the unfortunate circumstance of being dead. This recount could take until January, but I did find a webpage that shows some of the ballots these spastic stroke-fuckers managed to fart out. An opportunity to libel people we’ll never meet, all in the context of how our democracy is failing? Count me the fuck in!

STUPID SON OF A BITCH #1: 

Nice work, you illiterate shit. You want to vote for Norm Coleman, which is hilarious enough, but also for… Bad Men? Bachmen? Haha, what, now? 

I spent about twenty seconds doing research for this article, but one theory exists that someone with a similar name to Bachman was running for some office elsewhere in the state of Minnesota. But why, then, did this brainless mump fill in — wait, Christ. We need to go list style for this ballot.

1) The instructions were to fill in the circle, and this person did an “x” thing, probably pissing all over themselves in the process. This is why you can still find corduroy at department stores. 

2) If you want to write someone in, you’re generally expected to actually vote for that person. This person wrote someone in, but then failed to fill in the circle for that person! It’s like they meant this “Bachmen” thing to be more of a suggestion than anything else. “I’m not voting for her… but did you remember her? Hello?!?”

3) Al Franken was on the Democratic ticket, as well as the “Farmer” and the “Labor” parties? I love that the farmers and the Labor party can’t normally get along and had to engage in a painful split at some point, but came together in unity for Al. 

PERSON I’D BE HAPPY TO SEE DIE IN A GULAG #2: 

I mean, on one hand, we’ve all been there. We’ve had to suffer through endless politcal ads on TV and radio, and those of you that have HDTV, it’s even worse, as graphic cards are simply not capable of rendering the skin texture of the average politician in bump-mapping. On the other hand, a simple fill of the circle is perfectly fine – you don’t need to write “NO!” next to the other guy’s name.

(Although I do like the idea of writing little comments next to all the other guys running for offi- HA HA, NO I DON’T, just fill the goddamn things out and follow the instructions for once in your life, you animals.)

And why not get a new ballot? Everyone under the age of 26 is either going to try to vote ironically or be too wasted to bother to show up at all. There is no limit to the number of extra ballots you can request. I know it can be a pain in the ass if you’ve filled out all the local races and petitions and propositions before Senator, but honestly, if you are so concerned about the Local Angle that you fill all those in before Senators and Presidents, the nation is better off without your input anyway.

LUCAS DAVENPORT, IN A CLASS OF HIS OWN AS A DIPSHIT #3:

Let’s get a good look at the miserable manchild, 25, that is the face of the Republic at this moment: 

Meet Lucas Davenport! And here is the ballot he cast:

That’s right. Comedy Plutonium over here wrote in “Lizard People” for the Presidential election, and then also — and who would have figured him as a guy to drive a joke into the ground? — “Lizard People” for Senator.

Only he also voted for Al Franken, which is why his smug and over-sideburned visage is unforunately all over my nice, clean, white website.

Here are some choice quotes from the hipster in question:

“Because you don’t have to vote. It’s not mandatory. And I think that I have the right to vote for anybody I wish, even if it’s a made up candidate or even myself, if I wanted to write that in,” said Davenport.

“If I get my 15 minutes, I get my 15 minutes, and if not, I’ll have some good running gags for the rest of my life,” said Davenport.

I think I speak for the rest of us when I write, “LOL!!!!” I’ll leave you with this:

Think of the five worst Presidents in United States history. Consider all the terrible things they did with more power than any of us can ever truly imagine. All the temptation to engage in corruption. The impossibly long odds that they would ever be called out for the brazen liberties they took with the public trust. All that, and they still allowed this sniveling cocksucker to live until adulthood. Great work, bottom five. Why were you merely evil enough?

I have some friends who are 21 or 22, and no doubt thinking, “Hell yes, you are old. Christ.” Most of my other close friends are around 37, because I made these close friends in the dial-up BBS era, and that’s how it all shook out. So, sure, age is relative, but tonight is the first night I’ve ever personally felt old.

I had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee a few years ago. I can’t even pinpoint what set it off. I know that before it went completely, I tried to ski, and I had definitely — since the ski boot locks your ankles in place — jostled my knees mightily in the trying. I don’t think there’s been anything I’ve ever been worse at, than skiing. The ligament finally tore when  I was playing flag football in Fort Collins. I went down like someone shot me. I crawled off the field, in agony. I had to drive home, the 40 miles to Longmont, afterwards. It sucks that it was the right one, because it doesn’t give me an opportunity to say how every vehicle I’ve ever owned, save one old S-15, was a stick. I could have been suffering more!

I didn’t get surgery right away. It was diagnosed as a bruised meniscus, and I was told to stay off it for four weeks. I was on a crutch for the first time in my life. I wanted to play in the flag football tournament that season, so I had a goal in mind, a target, a reward for staying off it.

I played the week before the tournament. Just six or seven plays. It held up. I thought it had healed.

I lasted exactly one play the next week in the tournament. I went down, again, like someone shot me in the goddamn face with a railgun. There was no more football after the tournament, so I gave it the entire winter to heal. I then tried some roller hockey months later, made it through one game… and it fell apart the second game. I saw a specialist who instantly knew what was wrong with it.

He said that the ACL was torn, and we scheduled the surgery. I read every word about the operation on the Internet. I went for the ligament repair that involved taking a piece from a corpse, because I didn’t want them to grab from me elsewhere. I read that there was something like a 1 in 100,000 or one in a million chance of getting AIDS from the ligament. I took my chances, cos I’m a fawkin daredevil, yo. I also read that I’d definitely develop arthritis in my knee. It was a matter of when, not if. I have thought nothing of that.

Till tonight. As I was leaving work, my manager was out having a cigarette. We talked about the stuff I was working on – it wasn’t even particularly cold tonight, maybe mid-40s. Because of the fucked up and altogether worthless manner that we handle HVAC systems in this miserable country, it was almost as cold in side the office,  all day long. Pffft! But nevertheless, as I was out there, I got this dull pulse in my knee. The right knee. The one operated upon, so many days before.

I drove home and it was still there, lingering. A bit odd.

… And the pain was not quite hobbling, as I entered my abode. I shut the door and fed the cats, and grimly smiled as one shit its pants, and asked my knee in jest if this (all of this) was indeed me at my best, and my knee answered grimly: just an aching “nevermore.”

Enter dinner, which I started gobbling, with more life that I was badly bobbling, and I started up some Hugo, so that I might go code. I shut the door to shut out the cats (and the air was still sick of shitted pants) and reflected upon my decisions and the ones that I might still change. I created little fiction in a text game-riddled diction, and asked my knee if possibly there were better days ahead. It answered once again, well, you know, “nevermore.”

And I sit here just short of shallow sobbing, as my own knee performs the robbing; the stealing of my hope and soul and dreams of future lore. All alone in purgatory, with a ligament answering exclusively in the negatory, and I can’t stop myself from asking questions, more and more and more. It never answers yes, just a mirror to the mess, the aching still is making, haha, still is STILL is making of mockery of everything I ever did care for.  And no matter what I ask it, each query a bastard in a basket, the knee responds so grimly, an angry nevermo– oooooooooooookay, I think everyone gets it.

Fallout 3 is the first game I’ve been determined to play through to some sort of ending since BioShock, and unlike BioShock, this game is not a six-hour venture that even I can knock off in a week. Oh no. Bethesda makes video games like Oppenheimer makes bombs: glorious, expansive, and filled with a lifetime of pain for the consumers. Fallout 3 will be taking me straight through Halloween, right through Thanksgiving and into Christmas, and but for the grace of God do I not succumb to the dismal horrors presented every second in the Wasteland.

I can’t even adequately explain how depressing this game is, so let’s start off as to whether or not it’s fucking awesome. Here’s a quick Fallout 3 FAQ:

Q: Is Fallout 3, the third Fallout game, completely fucking awe-
A: IMMA ADDICTED TO STIMS

Q: …
A: I have a negATIVE ONE TO INT AND CHAR WHOops

Q: … Can you attach a screenshot that shows some of the —
A: STIMS

That screenshot doesn’t even do the combat system justice. Bethseda have outdone themselves with the thing they are calling “V.A.T.S.” — essentially, you enter this mode to target some of the freaks in the Wasteland, and then the game adopts a sort of slow motion, pseudocinematronic delight of the camera, to show what should be the absolute horrors of war, but what instead comes off as the greatest combat engine that’s ever existed.

I can’t even write straight right now. I’m just filled with all the cool things in this game – how you can detonate a nuclear weapon in one of the cities, how this is the first game where “repairing” a weapon doesn’t make me want to get the game disc in a state where it itself needs to be “repaired,” how one time my player was shooting a Raider in the chest with an assault rifle, and she JUMPED IN THE AIR to get the angle right as she unloaded a burst of weaponry into the poor bastard.

I’ve purchased Wasteland, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, the Brotherhood of Steel games and so on and so forth, but the most fun I’ve ever had was actually with the original (Wasteland). I actually think that it is just as true to Wasteland as it is (or isn’t, according to many of the posters at No Mutants Allowed) to Fallout. the VATS system really does seem to translate the original turn-based combat of Wasteland… and I love it.

Really, the nice little details in this game have me hooked. The unit of currency is bottle caps. There is a healing object in the game called Nuka Cola. If you drink some cola… a bottle cap is added to your inventory. I just love that someone thought of that, went, “a-ha!” and they were able to put it into the game.

The intro to Fallout 3 is terrible, but once you get past that, it really does pick up. The graphics are drop-dead gorgeous, and it has a perfect balance of ammo, money and enemies. They also resisted the monster closet issue that plagued Doom 3 – when you secure an area in Fallout 3, it seems to stay secure.

I do apologize for not updating my website the last week… but honestly, this is where I was.