Do other countries’ news channels “call” elections when 0% of the vote has been reported? Or does CNN poll the first ten people to walk out of the voting booth before calling the state. Seriously, where’s the drama? I got extrememly tired of hearing Chris Matthews pronounce the state as “Missour-ah” as though he was Granpa Simpson. Boring, boring, boring. Why not just have the election in eight states and get it over with?

The good news, for me at least, is that I won my election pool. Out of fifty states and one precinct, I guessed the outcomes of fifty correctly. I only missed Iowa, which I had going to Kerry. Still, that’s a 98% success rate. How come I don’t have my own talk show?

My first real post-Clarion story, “The Wendigo Killers,” is coming s l o w l y. I think I ‘ve inflated this story in my mind and it’s not going to live up to my expectations. Especially when I can’t figure out whether the ending has any sort of resonance whatsoever. Maybe I’ll know when I get there. I wrote a story at Clarion where I didn’t quite know how it went together, so I just wrote the four major scenes and cheaply strung them together. I find myself not quite knowing where to turn with TWK so I just write what comes. I have a feeling it’s terribly disjointed.

I checked out “Leviathan 3″ from the library, an anthology that contains Jeffrey Ford’s story “The Weight of Words.” This story was up for a Nebula award but was beaten out by…another Jeffrey Ford story, “Creation,” which happens to be one of my favorites. So I’m interested in seeing what TWOW is all about.

In the last bit of news, Van Halen’s “5150″ is perhaps the most underrated Van Hagar song out there. And sadly, as of today, Joe Strummer is still dead.

Tonight there was a power cut in the city of madness
All conversations died in the burst of a solar flare
In the darkness an angel won the beauty pagent
And stroboscopic snowflakes fell from the stratosphere
And all the neon blew down funky Broadway
And shorted out the eastern shore
Only saxophones and beach trombones
Were left to shout out ‘we all need a little more!

And I’m waiting for the rays of the morning sun
Somebody tell me clearly has the new world begun?
Let all the wailing wail, let the drummer drum
We’re waiting for the rays of the morning sun
Has anybody seen the morning sun?