Public Service

I received something in the mail that has terrified me and I'm considering living under my bed for the foreseeable future. The dreaded dispatch is the Town Meeting Warrant, and a meeting is scheduled for January. It's for the elected town meeting members, of which I am one, because I stupidly voted for myself in the 2006 election for my precinct. Four other people did (my father and three neighbors) and now I have to go to the town meeting...because I had to be a smart-ass.

One reason that I don't want to go is my insanity. At the meeting, there are two possibilities regarding how I'll act and feel. I break it down like this; there's a 75% chance of my being withdrawn, sullen, quiet and uninterested in the proceedings. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about zoning issues, or hearing the report from the 2008 Town Day Planning Committee. I want it done, just not by me.

So I'll sit there and let my apathy wash over me, and perhaps take in the architecture of the building, of which I'm fond. Also on the agenda is how I'll go to great lengths to avoid talking to the people I know, or even worse the strangers who want to talk to me at random. I mean Jesus Christ is there anything worse than talking to people? It's why I stopped going to the Unitarian Universalist Church. Even though I'm an atheist, I thought I'd enjoy coffee and an intellectual discussion about the nature of god; I was wrong.

I couldn't get the fuck out of there fast enough.

But there is another possibility, especially where politics is concerned. I estimate a 25% chance that someone will really piss me off about something. Not zoning, but they tack on larger issues at the end of the meeting, like passing resolutions against the war or making a statement about the evils of torture. Most people at the town meeting don't care about these large issues because it's all symbolic and very divisive. The bigger the issue, the fewer people give a shit what we have to say about it.

That said, if one cunt takes the stage and says something off the wall like, "We need to pass a resolution against gay marriage" I'll do an Incredible Hulk impression and wake up in a dumpster the following morning. What I mean is that I'll get so worked up that I'll make a spectacle of myself.

On the plus side, I'll know in advance what is on the agenda and will be able to do a feet don't fail me now out the door, thus avoiding a shouting match over a meaningless political vote at the end of the meeting.

Basically, I just shouldn't leave my flat...ever.

Why did I have to vote for Darren W. Lyle?