Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Odds and Ends March 2nd 2010

I’ll start with yesterday’s cat calendar because it hit close to home. It was about this time last year when we found we had Hobo Kitties taking up residence in our garage.
I was having a great conversation with my friend Steve, nothing in particular; just two old pharts laughing and having a good time comparing which joint was inflamed today. He told me of a young woman/girl with the name Le-a; asked how I’d pronounce her name. I took a stab at it and said, "Leah".

Steve was already laughing as he went on to explain how her mother was quite adamant, “It’s pronounced Ledasha!” If she’d been Jewish would it be Lehyphena?

An entire generation has been brought up while their parents were text messaging; heaven help us. Think about the possibility of this particular young woman having to deal with taking on a married name. If she finds herself in the camp of feminism, a strong identity crisis will require an additional hyphen, a means of separating her identity from that of her husband.

I went over to the polling place for the Texas Republican Primaries a while ago. There was a sign on all the doors, big bold letters, explaining that it was only for Republicans. I looked the polling official in the eye and joked, “That’s right, Democrats vote on Wednesday.” Everyone within earshot either smiled or laughed quietly in place as I presented my stand up comedian card; I mean, my voter’s registration card along with my Texas driver’s license. As yet there is no requirement to show any official photo identification in Texas; but that’s one of the items being voted on this year.

Texas state law requires I see some form of official photo identification if I perform any locksmith work; a driver’s license, passport or Block Buster Video Membership card. You’d think casting a vote would at least be as important as cutting a car key; but what do I know?

Why would any sane person be against verifying the credibility of a voter? I don’t really know; unless such a voter was known to be casting a second, third or fourth time vote on the same day, a non resident attempting to sway an election for which he/she was geographically not qualified to participate in or any number of reasons to include voting vicariously for the dearly departed.

The cat calendar neglected to mention that it’s “take a locksmith out to lunch day”. I just made that up to see if anyone bothers reading past the first paragraph.

I was on my way to make keys for a Chevy truck at one of my regular dealerships when my phone rang to let me know they’d found the key. I told them to wave at me out the front window since I was about to turn into their driveway; could be one of those days, a second Monday on the calendar this week.

2 comments:

The probligo said...

Le-a reminds me of a guy I worked with a few many moons back in the days before hyphenated names became more popular.

His name was Roberts-Brown; but he sorta liked the idea of "Roberts birdperch Brown". And so it stuck and he was known around work anyway as "birdperch".

You have to state your political affiliation on your voter registration card? And you complain about having to move to a photo id to vote?

What happens if you change your mind?

T. F. Stern said...

Birdperch, lol

As far as party affiliation being stamped on the voter's registration card; that's to keep folks from voting in both party primaries, another form of voter fraud which remains prevalent even today. Many folks claim to have left their voter registration card at home and yet are permitted to vote because their name appears on a list of residents in that geographical area.

This creates a hole through which many slip past, either intentionally or by accident. For example, my daughter no longer lives in our home; but her name appears on the list of qualified voters. If she wanted to she could vote in our precinct even though she now lives in another.

Having a valid form of identification with a photo would seem reasonable. Voter registration cards do not have a photo on them; seems logical and not that unreasonable to have that form contain a picture ID as well.

Thanks for contributing to this thread.