Split Schedule Informal Poll:

You work evenings. Not quite graveyard, but the earliest you're ever done with work is 11:30 p.m. Late ends around 3:15 a.m., though the general average for shift-finishing is 1:30 a.m., which is what it'll likely be tonight. You often take between one and three hours after getting off work to fall asleep. Today, due to a variety of forces, you got up at 8:30 a.m. (you didn't work last  night, so you got about 6 1/2 hours of fitfullish sleep) and now it is 1:45 p.m. and you're looking ahead to a night of work. You've achieved a couple of things you planned for the day, but there's a huge gap between the now and the then.
Soo do you:
--all answers are legally binding, btw--

A) Go home and nap; sleep all the sleep you didn't have until your alarm sounds and you have fifteen minutes to get to the train and work. Ignore bodily or mental impulses that try to wake you up, sublimate the already consumed caffeine and pull blankets and pillows over your head and squeeze your eyes tight, demanding every possible second of rest from the universe.

B) Power through. Another cup of coffee, dish doing, poem editing, service-provider-calling, information-gathering, eating, then, after that, work will seem less a daily grind than a remarkably decision-free zone where you can know for facts what your best uses of time are.

C) Start "The Idiot."

D) Wander around the general waterfront area and do a lot of gazing out upon it, toy with the idea of taking a ferry to Bremerton and back again, just in time for work. Backlog that on a list of things to do someday. (See also: King Street Station and a bus to Kent.)

E) A reasonable mix: go home, short nap, dishes, grab some groceries for the morning. Boring blog post, decent day.

F) If you do________________ much of _______________, you'll give yourself permission to ___________ before work. If not, WEEP!

G) What was that movie everyone was telling you about? You've got the time.

These are the things I talk to myself about on days like this.

Sawantsawantsawant.

I spoke too soon.
Now we'll se if she can work with other council members to improve the lot of the working class in Seattle, what differences she can make, and whether or not this has national influence.

File Under Poetry and Sports:

Tonight I'm reading an article rather than poetry. It has been a long time since I read an article, aloud, to people. Maybe even a first?

Later, as in, December 12th, I'll be reading at Honeymoon, in Bellingham, with Marissa Dimmick. Still later, the 15th of December, I'll be performing somewhere in Greenwood at an unnamed venue with unnamed makers of beats and noise, for an unnamed event. Its that new.

And the hopeful predictions ending with a "womp WOMP"

Well, she didn't win. Most of the things I was hoping to pass failed, but some of the things I dreaded passing also failed, and plucky little do-gooder Mike O'Brien retains his seat on the city council, despite Seattle Times' declaration that he was "too liberal" for the city. Anyway, was bummed yesterday and Tuesday, took half a sec to scroll through my semi-active Facebook, and after about forty minutes of rant-reading, have taken to looking forward. Murray is mayor, Conlin at least had to sweat for his seat, this is the reality, it is still rainy, I still have a job I don't hate, and I've just completed a move to as close to the middle of the city as I can afford. This is day two of typing from Cafe Vita Pioneer Square, which may easily become a second living room, for as long as I'm netless in my studio.

If she wins, I hope she just drops the mic and walks away.

I sat outside Rudy's barbershop and filled out my King County/City of Seattle ballot. I had a hard time mustering too much enthusiasm for many of the issues at hand, but did fill out the ballot (yes to food labeling, don't see what's so hard about that, no to anything that smacks of Eyman's NIMBY, aristocraticonservatism) and as informed of votes as possible regarding the specific candidates who'll be leading this pretty-good to greatish city into the future.

For mayor, I went with Mike McGinn. Sort of a devil-you-know approach, I suppose, as I was not impressed with his handling of Seattle's well-documented culture of police brutality. When the Feds tell you "yeah, you guys are too racist and violent," that's a fucking problem, and McGinn didn't seem to know what to do with it. That said, his opponent, Ed Murray, seems to be of the "OH MY GOSH THIS CITY IS SO DANGEROUS WE NEED TO HIRE MORE COPS ALL THE TIME .. . . but ah, no, they won't be the racist type. Trust me."

Frankly, one thing I'd like to see done on this issue (as a first, and not only) step would be to require that police officers who work in, and for, the City of Seattle, actually live there.
Or within a very close radius.
Plus, McGinn is really strong on issues like Transit, which is pretty close to my heart/ability to live and work in town.

The other interesting thing to watch has been how the Seattle Times has been outright campaigning for Murray; reason alone to distrust him. ST is as close to a republican rag as you can get in Seattle, and as it tends to service the greater Puget Sound area (you can get it as far north as Bellingham, no problem) it also caters quite a bit to Eastside interests and concerns. Which are not, in and of themselves evil, or wrong, but Bellevue is not Seattle. It has spent the last sixty years trying to play an image of both Northwest-hominess and incredible opulence. In the last twenty, it's asserted itself as a business center and constructed Washington State's second densest skyline (I think; Tacoma may give it a run), creating the sense of a City without the culture, vibrancy, or diversity*, and as such, shouldn't try to influence what Seattle does or wants. So the fact that Murray sometimes acts like he's running for the Mayor of Seattle Met, Meet Me in Kirkland For Martinis Later doesn't sit well with me.**

Also, I voted for Kshama Sawant. I'm not a socialist in any sort of large-scale way*** but we need a real lefty on the council. Someone who'll advocate for the poor and the working to big businesses, not the other way around. Someone who'll advocate for affordable housing in the quickest-rising rent (disproportionate to income, btw) in the nation. If she gets elected, will she be able to push all her talking points through? No. No one ever does. But I'm pretty stoked that I get to vote for a candidate I believe actually gives a shit about anyone making under $80,000 a year.

*This is changing. Bellevue in 2013 is different than it was, and it will continue to change, both due to abstract, inevitable forces of growth, and also because recently the Bellevue city council has been shaking the grip of some of it's most backwards-asshole influences.

** Ed Murray, if polls are to be believed, will probably win. I do not believe he'd be the unmitigated disaster that Bruce Harrell or Tim Burgess or Peter Steinbrueck would have, but I'd still have a bit of an "ugh."

***Though by any red-state standards, I'd probably be considered a Maoist. I think in the American Debate we've gone far enough to the right as of late that I'd like to see more unabashed Socialists coming out to pull this country's head out of its ass, and that can happen on a city level as well.