Miscellaneous

Part of me wants to see John Kerry elected, just to see what would happen.

I honestly don't know which is the better candidate anymore. I'm afraid if Bush stays in, he'll continue to alienate the rest of the world--I'm not one of those people who can dismiss the rest of the world so easily, because I would like to travel to other countries without being hated and persecuted. I would like to see other countries as just being other places with people in them. I'd really like it if we had no enemies, but that's just wishful thinking.

But I'm also afraid of what Kerry might do. I'm afraid that he'll completely undermine Bush's efforts to stamp out terrorism. I'm afraid it'll be a step backwards. I'm afraid we'll withdraw from Iraq and let the insurgents take over. If that happens, I'm afraid that terrorists will see even more proof that their tactics work.

Bin Laden's comparison of the US to Russia, and the terrorist attrition tactics that supposedly brought Russia to its knees, was really interesting to me. Sean interprets that as meaning Bin Laden is afraid of Bush and wants to scare us into electing Kerry. What would it mean if we took to heart the words of a terrorist? Of a person with no morals, who would kill thousands of innocent people--noncombatants--in order to strike at ideologies? Can we say, "Yes, Bin Laden is right, we'd better get Bush out of there"?

Or is Bin Laden hoping that we'll arrogantly ignore his warning, re-elect Bush, and continue to funnel money and people into the Iraq sinkhole?

Honestly, he's set himself up to be the winner either way. Either he gets us to back off, or he gets to continue his war of attrition. That is probably what he is hoping we'll be thinking...ultimately, I'm sure he was just trying to add confusion. It's probably best to just ignore the words of a terrorist and make our decision based on the candidates' merit, assuming that's possible.

To me, social issues can't even begin to compare to the war. I want to ensure that the president is the right man to handle Bin Laden. Issues like gay marriage and other social freedoms might fall by the wayside with this limited thinking. I don't want them to. But the war itself is just so complex. I honestly don't know how to pick a candidate just based on that most important criteria!

I wish there was a charismatic, brilliant, economic and war conservative, social issues liberal, photogenic, likeable candidate.

Is it true that only 4% of people are undecided? How did all those other people come to a satisfactory conclusion?

In other news...

I've been thinking this morning about why I didn't get the job. I didn't misrepresent myself at all during the interviews, but I think I did leave out some writing samples that could have helped. I didn't think to use 2go-Box samples until the very last minute, and that probably hurt me more than anything.

Even so, I don't have any experience in dedicated technical writing. So maybe that's all it was.

I'm also feeling strangely relieved, as though I was trying to convince myself that technical writing was cool and that it was what I wanted to do, but now I don't have to do it after all. Tingeing that, of course, is nervousness: what do I want to do? I really enjoy working at 2go-Box, where I do a myriad number of things, but unless things pick up for that business, I'm not going to make the kind of money I want by staying there.

My friend Mr. Justice (of AMRN fame) reminded me of the idea I had earlier this year for starting my own business. I've been thinking a lot about that recently.

Why don't I just do that? Why don't I just stop trying to mold myself into a "job"? Maybe I am, as Robert describes himself, "unemployable". Maybe I want to be the owner, the boss.

I think I'll keep thinking about it.