Don’t you hate it when you have a scab that you accidentally scrape and then it starts bleeding all over the place? I fell on some glass when I was at Brainerd and got some pretty nice sized cuts on my legs. So of course they scabbed over and the scab slowly got smaller and smaller. But today when I was loading my bike into the car I scraped the scab and ripped it right off, and of course the blood just started gushing like I had be shot or something. Didn’t have anything in the car to put any pressure on it, except for a pair of socks in a bag in the back, so now I have a sock that’s full of blood. It looks like something seriously awful happened to that sock.

It took a little bit to stop the bleeding but I now have it under control. It’s nothing serious, it will heal. I was sure to get some hydrogen peroxide on it, in fact for some reason I sped home as fast as I could to get some on it. Something in my childhood instilled in me that whenever something bleeds I have to get hydrogen peroxide on it immediately or I’ll have to amputate or something. Maybe it’s some kind of phobia like “hemaphobia” which is a fear of bleeding.

My injuries are rather minor compared to a little accident I witnessed when I was biking to school this morning. I saw some guy laying in the middle of the road, it appears he was hit by a car as there was a car sitting there looking a little dented in the front. He wasn’t moving, so that’s not good. What an awful situation that would be. Not only is it awful for the guy that got hit but for the person who hit him. It would be a really terrible feeling. I remember how terrible I felt getting into a basic auto accident with another car, and it wasn’t even my fault. By the position of the guy, it appears he was jaywalking. People do that all the time around here, and I guess it’s just a matter of time before they learn their lesson the hard way. People just jump out into the street without even looking and as a driver it makes you incredibly nervous.

Growing up in a small town, generally there wasn’t hardly any pedestrian traffic to deal with. Near downtown Minneapolis there’s almost more people walking around then there are cars driving around. That added a whole new level to the whole driving situation when I moved here. In good old Cooperstown, people will drive three blocks to go get a stick of butter. In Minneapolis people will often park in a parking ramp and walk half a mile or more to where they work. Then of course downtown there are a lot of people who take buses or just wander around for no reason, so it gets to be a real mess. I prefer driving in the suburbs much more.

Speaking of people wandering around filling up the streets, half a million people did so in New York City yesterday to protest the Republican National Convention. I hear it’s the largest assembled protest in American history, as long as they’re getting the numbers right. I thought that was funny, I always thought the “Million Man March” was actually a million men which if your math skills are at least at an elementary level you’d know that’s twice as many people as protested in New York yesterday. Maybe “Million Man” was just a figure of speech, or something.

Those who agree with what was being protested are awfully proud and enthused today. I’m proud to live in a country where people can protest like that and all, but I do however think some of the things people were saying were kind of tasteless. Like the people I saw on C-Span screaming “Fuck Fox News” sets such a wonderful example for the youth of this country. People toting signs proclaiming Bush to be a terrorist and advocating ending Bush’s life in a cruel manner are hardly protesting peacefully. If that isn’t rabid hate then someone needs to explain to me what it is.

It can’t be healthy to hate a person who’s simply standing up for their views just like they are. They promote free speech yet a cable channel excersing it’s right to free speech gets told “Fuck Fox News!” I disagree with some of the things Bush stands for, but I don’t hate him for it at all. I respect that his views are just as valid as mine. I disagree with a lot of the views being displayed in that crowd of people, but I don’t hate any of them. The only thing, as I said, that I find completely scary and apalling about this is the maturity level and the amount complete hate that was displayed. It just really disturbs me.

Someone on the radio I was listening to as I drove home was asking the conservative radio host if he was “even the least bit worried about seeing a half a million people standing up against what you believe in? Don’t you even think for a moment that there’s something wrong with what you believe in when you see a demonstration like that?” The radio host talked about how he “has seen it all before back in the 60s and 70s” and that “liberals are just plain more hateful and pessimistic and so that’s why you see a lot more of this coming from them.” I can see what he’s saying, I’ll agree that there is just so much more hate and pessimism coming from the left and it’s just really disturbing. I look at the half million people and the first thing that comes to my mind is wow, that’s a lot of hateful people. I also think about how great it is that they can protest like that. Hey, at least they don’t have to do it in a “designated area” like the conservative protestors did at the DNC. The left seems to want to censor what conservatives have to say. They want Fox News shut down, they don’t want people protesting in the streets but in a designated fenced in area. I don’t agree with that stuff at all.

But ultimately I don’t base my political views on what a crowd of people think. I’m trying to stay open minded and sticking to my self promise not to become a zealot for one party over the other and make compromises. I don’t want to be one of those people automatically hating whatever the other party does. I don’t like being hateful in any circumstances, i’ve been that way in situations in the past and felt awful about it. The problem I have mainly with this in politics is that most of the time the partisan bickering gets in the way of actual progress, like it is in this election right now. Each side hates the other so much that even if the other side does something good that normally they’d agree with, it’s still bad because they didn’t come up with it. This constant desperation to one-up eachother is just childish and I’m tired of it.

Maybe if we had some better candidates, I still can’t believe Kerry is the best guy the Democrats have to offer. Joe Libermann is an open minded individual who I would have probably supported with a little entusiasm. Then again, there are better people than Bush to offer on the right. I’d support John McCain with all the enthusiasm that I have. Now if it was Liebermann against McCain, i’d be in a similar “I don’t know who to vote for” dillemma. But I’d probably vote for McCain.

Currently I’m waiting for John Kerry to get his campaign out of the 1970s. If he’d stop bragging about his military service maybe the Swift Boat Veterans would stop attacking him and we could move on to the real problems at hand. I have yet to understand his stance on the Iraq war, which is a very important issue and I think we’d all agree. I’m especially confused after seeing this small video which shows some of the statements Kerry has made in reference to the war. After watching it I really can’t figure out how he truly stands, and it really doesn’t seem out of context. Watch the whole video if you think you’re certain about how he stands, and see how you feel after watching it. After watching it my thought is simply reinforced, is this really the best guy the Democratic party has to offer?

Well I’m going to stop thinking about this now and try to focus some attention on work. I have a lot to do tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more this week than last week. It shouldn’t be quite as busy this week. Maybe I can actually uphold that daily message thing I thought I’d be able to do. Sorry that hasn’t been working out so far. Talk to you soon.