You Do The Math - Why You Should Not Vote for John McCain

One of the benefits of having what is euphemistically called a "hematologic malignancy", polycythemia vera, is that you get to listen to some very, very candid stories from people during normal conversation.

Anyway, feeling somewhat strange over the course of the past week, I reported to the Moores Cancer Center at UCSD this afternoon for my weekly blood check. Well, almost weekly. I skipped it last week, as I really didn't want my dear son, whom I love more than life itself, to have to watch his father get stuck with a harpoon and bled off to the tune of something that resembled an overinflated, very small plastic pillow. Which would then be unceremoniously donated to the nearest biowaste disposal unit, the garbage.

We began this afternoon in somewhat of a dark place; the humor is almost a mask for the terror we all really feel, but it's life and we do indeed laugh. We have to, because having to actually go to a cancer center is the pits. It's not good. At 47, I never imagined it'd be me who would have to report goings on from that sort of place. And I am here reporting to you from a place that, I pray, has no windows directly into your lives at this point. As a result of the situation, I am fortunate to get to watch as people who are usually quite a bit older than me come in. There are plenty of WWII veterans in there on any given day. Being a student of WWII, I love to talk to them about their exploits. I can tell that those old men, many of whom willingly and gladly shed blood for an America that fough and killed the Japanese on one side of the world and the Germans on the other, having gone to war in many cases for reasons bigger than they are - for their country and for freedom -- and the freedom of a lot of people from evil -- really knew how to live their lives having faced imminent and very often painful death in the face. This is what I witness and have witnessed for the past two years. Basically, I get to see people who are too busy for bullshit. They know how precious this life is - not just the physicality of life, but the concept of life itself. They have known it since at least they left the armed forces after WWII and in many cases, on top of making friends with the grim reaper later on in life, they knew deprivation during the great depression of 1929, which eventually lasted until the country went to an all-out war footing after 1941. Combat soldiers and the elderly in general command my respect and admiration, for the most part.

Through humor we and nurses who know, laugh back at the world that we will all leave behind to our children. We all realize the beauty of the world, of music and of life that must be lived
always and despite, for something bigger, because it is from places like this that we grow out of ourselves and into something that is clearly bigger and more important than our own physical selves. Or at least yearn for that kind of sense of immanence, when you think, but aren't quite sure, that it all makes sense that it makes no sense. I report here in the hope that you will live every moment before your life too becomes measured and partially defined but totally governed by date of diagnosis. I'm 2004. Pleasure to meet you.

Somehow or another the topic of Mr. McCain's Vice Presidential pick came up this afternoon as I was trying vainly to make myself comfortable on the hospital-cheesy plastic faux LAZ-Boy. As my nurse prepped my arm and got ready to stick me with Lidocaine to numb the skin before the harpoon goes in (would that the whales at the time of Moby Dick and Herman Melville had the same privilege), one of the other nurses, whose name will herein remain nameless, says out loud in not quite the tone of Charlie Brown's teacher and the tenor of a fairly nasal, down to earth person's pitch: "I've heard it's somethin' like 20:1 MEN in Alaska! Dont'cha know what's happenin' in the PALIN house?! And I mean BOTH OF THEM. Bristol AND Sarah!"

There are approximately 600,000 people in Alaska. You do the math. Good for them. It's the Von Palin- Schtupp Family! They aren't Catholic, but every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. They think that if a sperm is wasted, God will get quite irate. What kind of aria will they sing? Monty Python needs to re-do that skit and feature the Von Palin-Schtupp Family. You heard it here first. And if Monty Python don't do it, I'll faux pledge to make that opera come to life as my gift to the world.

I received a comment from a reader yesterday that was quite interesting. He says all the sexual activity in the Palin household is a good thing, because that way, we can start to repopulate the earth with white people and Jews to counterbalance the ever-increasing rise of what I presumed he meant to say "the Moslem Hordes". Fabulous. We can bring orgies officially back to the White House. Sex will once again be back in vogue. As in the time of the Third Reich it will be a National Security issue and therefore an obligation. We should pursue that worthy agenda with American gusto. We should pursue it with the same intensity that we are beginning to fight foreign domination of the oil we need. Many of the the present economic woes are directly traceable back to foreign domination of the oil we need, so sex and oil are at the top of any McCain/Palin ticket. They can come to Washington and show the white establishment how it's meant to be done and prove that it can be done and done well. Then and only then will mankind come to terms with itself as far as its priorities are concerned. All of our citizens will be reasonably hot, horny or powerful.

I looked up at one of the nurses and said: "Did you see the picture of Bristol Palin on the cover of the UT? (They charge .75 for that rag? People pay money for that? In this town? No wonder it's dying.) I saw it out in the waiting room. "She's a .....cow", I thought to myself feeling kind of weird even rendering an opinion. She wouldn't stand a chance of sex in California, so the fact that she is fat tells me that a powerful woman is quite an attractive thing. I guess she wasn't that fat.

Apparently, this abstinence-educated, reasonably mature young woman of 17 was never told by her mother or her father to watch out and be careful not to get knocked up. She was never told that there are boys that would love to do so to the governor's daughter. This is the reason not to vote for John McCain. A woman and a man who are either morons or completely disconnected from their kids will be a breath away from the most powerful position on earth. This is that upon which he bases his "country first" boast? This election is too important to momentarily or remotely think about leaving this country to ideological, disconnected morons again. I hope Bristol Palin lives through the bullshit that they are dragging her through. She can't help herself, and neither could the kid who is likewise dragged into this mess as the father. I feel worst for her and him. Neither of them signed up for any of this. Not a bit. They're just in high school. We, alas are not. I know.

Randy Shiner