OK, back from that? Can you stand a bit more silly stuff? Listen to this take on captcha words:
Captcha from Gabrielle de Vietri on Vimeo.
We'll see how long this lasts before it's removed but I really got a kick out of MaryBeth's FB when she posted this for me!
Today is voting day in FLorida, and when I got back from the studio today TY wanted to go get something to eat (yeaaa, no cooking!) and we'd stop to vote along the way. OK, I didn't think I could vote in a Republican election but a restaurant meal will lure me anywhere! We got to the library and were turned away because it was the wrong place, headed a few miles down the road to the elementary school they directed us to. Told TY again I didn't believe I was allowed to vote, In we went, showed our ID's, and the woman's arm SHOT up like we do when we hit the brakes roof as and a little kid is next to us in the car- you know that gesture. Well she did that and yelled, YOU CAN'T VOTE-THIS IS ONLY FOR REPUBLICANS- YOU'RE AN INDEPENDENT. You'll HAVE TO LEAVE.
Geesh, those republicans sure are secretive, I wasn't gonna steal ballots or anything. But I do want to talk about my long history of being a GDI:
First time I heard that term was back at Ole SU where I had transferred my junior year. I didn't now anybody and was sort of swept along with the other transfer students and found myself in a sorority rush, not intentional, it just seemed like what was expected of me. So I went from house to house and liked some places and found others insufferable, but learned the Greek alphabet along the way. This went on for days it seems, looking back, and there were some girls I really liked but they were all a bit too rah-rah for me as a new kid, there was another sorority who all wanted to talk about partying day and night, another one who were all quite unattractive and bookish and I knew not for me. One group of girls all dressed alike- huh? And another, when I looked them up in the yearbook all had their noses AND hair bobbed identically so the group picture looked like a Warhol print. Basically I didn't fit and it was fine with me, I really didn't care much because by then I had made a few friends in my independent dorm and they were busy plotting to secede from the university. Now THAT I could get behind! So we did. We wrote up a charter and declared ourselves independent and now we could stay out all night and not sign in and out and basically either run amuck OR run our own lives, whichever way we picked. OK, so it took some time to settle down but we did fine.
I'd see my sorority friends having to be at Sunday meetings, having to run functions, learning how to run junior leagues and young republican clubs and alumni groups, and doing their hair. I spent extra time in the dilapidated hospital building they gave us as studio space, not necessarily working, but most certainly learning things from my odd ball assortment of friends that wouldn't be taught in any Alpha Anything Pi Delta Whatever Chi. One woman, with hair all the way down her back and looking like Cher but Cher wasn't invented yet, built herself a loom hanging from overhead pipes and next thing we knew she had dragged her mattress down the street and into her space to sit cross-legged and hold forth with strange things wafting past in the air and odd boys with guitars they never seemed to really play. I learned from her that you can improvise when you need something done. I learned from her that 'the rules' aren't necessarily real, they were probably negotiable. And I learned from her to do what I wanted to do as long as a goal was in mind. She was about as GDI as a young woman could be and I found out that was where I wanted to position myself too.
Long way of saying I don't register politically as one or the other, I don't go to one church or another, I dance around the edges and make up my own mind. I like some odd people simply for their own takes on things and count them as good friends. I like to listen and ask questions only to clarify if I don't understand a point. And I like to be alone to digest all this information before I have to actually use it.
So, if I am conservative on some issues, and liberal on others it's OK- I'll find the lesser of two evils to vote for in the end.
5 comments :
I like you. You sound like fun. =) You didn't perchance Rush in the mid 1980s did you? That was exactly what Greek life was like then too. I didn't do it either. My dorm was the party dorm. Eventually we learned that it was better to have someone else's dorm be the party dorm. Then there wasn't throw-up in your own stairwell. That's important.
How did THEY know you were an independent? Just something to ponder.
Hi Anon- They knew I was a GDI because when I registered to vote when I got my new FL license, I didn't pick a party. But in some states people of our persuasion can vote in these elections, like what went on in SC - they have open election where everybody can vote for anything. Hence the skewed Gingrich counts there. I haven't voted in FL before, didn't know, but suspected, I couldn't add my 2 centavos!
When we moved to Oregon we, too, learned that we had to register as something, so we registered as independents and then learned we could not vote in the primaries, so I registered as a republican and Ray registered as a democrat and that way we could get our 2 cents in on both elections. Then last time I really wanted to vote for Obama so I changed my registration. It's a stupid system.
Love the captcha thing. I have been collecting some of them for something...maybe unreadable text in textile art?
Sandy in the UK
ByThe Way
the way the lady yelled at you reminds me of how the Am. soldier yelled at the Romanians when we went to the embassy there (trying to adopt after the revolution) I was so ashamed. It wasn't like the poor things waiting for a chance to try to get a ticket out of there were going to take him over in his bullet proof glass box feeling all superior. Those are the sorts of things that make me hide my origins and do the quiet British thing with my introvert British husband.
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