Bury My Vote At Wounded Knee

Ah, another awful news week.  You know, there used to be this old political tradition known as "The October Surprise."  There is, of course, a Wikipedia page entry for it... hmm!  Forgot about the 2008 one.  As you will notice, there are two that don't involve a Presidential election, from 2003 and 2006.  Our current president seems to be immune to such quaint traditions: most notably, that slow-moving Access Hollywood bus to destiny.  But on the eve of this, the most important election in our history, there are now two that stick out for me.  One, the horrible, Medieval killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and two, the scourge of voter suppression has finally spread to Native American voters.  You know, because they are the children of Geronimo Voters.  Apparently, Republicans are a bit nervous about all this, but they don't play it on TV.  But it would seem to me that they have two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable post-election realities.  One, they lose their slight margin of power in the House and Senate, or two, they keep all the power, thereby prompting more Soros-funded rallies in the streets.  Seeing as how they have no specific agenda, except overturning Roe v. Wade in particular, and "Everything is wrong unless a Republican does it" in general, maybe now would be a good time to take a vacation to get in touch with their outer Kochs.  The world may be getting more liberal as the 2030 Climate Change deadline approaches, but who are the really ruthless billionaires going to start backing as candidates?  A Democrat?  That'll be the day.  Inheritances are fun.
Speaking of which, there's that Mega Millions jackpot.  Wow!  Man oh man!  1.6 billion dollars?  Powerball seems a little bit less powerful now!  Maybe it's just me.  Of course, there's apparently a new tax on lottery winnings, so it adds up to about $450 actual take-home.  Not to mention all your aunts and uncles that seem to worm their way out of the woodwork, when a new source of monetary celebrity is within their six degrees.  Such an expensive world we live in.  Take, for example, the #1 movie this week: the latest iteration of that old Halloween story.  Director David Gordon Green continues his fight to stay away from the critical acclaim he received early in his career for films like George Washington and All the Real Girls.  He's an artist who's not afraid to make a little money, thank God!
Meanwhile, the other big picture this week... well, new film, anyway, is purported to be Robert Redford's last, and it's called The Old Man of the Mountain, starring Betty Boop, soon to be removed from YouTube... I mean, The Old Man and the Sea based on the Ernest Heming... I mean, The Old Man & the Gun.  I like the trailers for it because they use the font from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  And if he is indeed 82 years old, as the Internet says, maybe that's a good time to retire... unless the movie's a big hit?  Oscar buzz?  Nope?  Okay, maybe it's time to retire, and just stick with The Sundance Channel and the National Resources Defense Council fulltime?  Does Redford have any contemporaries he's competing with anymore?  Besides Hal Holbrook and Christopher Plummer?

Oh, I would like to take this opportunity to pass on some notes to my implicit boss, Google.  I can't tell on my computer if the new cookies notifications work or not, and the library's not open today.  But I did notice a glitch with the map function.  See, for the uninitiated, when you have a blog, they provide you with a handy map to show where your various web traffic is coming from: Russia, Canada, Poland, the continental United States, what have you.  If a part of the world is particularly blocked with chock-a-block traffic, like when the Russian bots try and see where they can infiltrate, the country turns dark green... as you can now see from the attached pic.  By the way, is this you in this picture?  Anyway, there's some country called "Unknown Region" that turns the whole map very light green.  I don't know why that should happen, but it throws off the statistics by color.  Maybe it's the first one in the array or something.  Probably one of those glitches that aren't worth fixing; I mean, if not from the Unknown Region, where else is our sense of wonder supposed to come from these days?