Vote "No" on Prop #2

Today's the Board of Education election, the most useless election ever. There's only one guy running for Board of Ed, so the good news is that I can fuck with our sacred democratic process by writing in Abraham Lincoln or Tom Cruise or Captain Crunch or something. (I think either Lincoln or Captain Crunch would make a better addition to our Board of Ed than any of the current members.) I wasn't going to bother voting, but there's also the budget issue, which I voted "yes" to, since I don't pay property taxes and therefore it doesn't affect my bottom line. And there's Proposition #2, which allocates money to spread Astroturf on the football and soccer fields behind the high school. Well, that sounds like hard-earned tax dollars well-spent, after all our high school football and soccer teams haven't done for me. How much money are we talking about here?

Two million dollars. For fake grass. I think for that sort of money, we ought to be able to Astroturf the whole town.

I wasn't on the football or soccer team back when I went to high school. I wasn't one of those aloof emo kids either; I joined the literary magazine, the band, the quiz bowl team, and probably some other stuff I can't even remember, and you know how much local money all of those clubs got combined? Not one damn penny. We had to sell cookies, magazines, bagels, oranges (surprisingly popular), any sort of crap just to make, say, a thousand dollars for a new computer. So I'm a little bit resentful that people are coming together for the sports teams the way no one, not the school or the PTA or the Board of Ed or the town helped us out.

I have a compromise. We spend the two million dollars on new books instead of Astroturf, but then we let the soccer players kick the books around outside. Everybody wins.