Time Magazine says, “Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade. Call it whatever you want — just give thanks that it is nearly over.” Time Magazine’s Andy Serwer article, The ’00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade from Hell seems like it should be a New Year’s piece, but sometimes it is hard to wait. Heck, I’d intended to post this on December 31 and here I am posting it early too.

The last decade was certainly one filled with digital snake oil and the rise of wikiality over reality, tonal arguments over logical debate, and the erosion of freedom and privacy in the developed world. Many hipsters love to observe on how zombies are awesome monsters because they are weaker than their prey but make up for their shambling loserdom with numbers. So the past decade also saw the rise of people jumping up and down shouting individualist buzzwords while conforming as fast as humanly possible. And I’m not too thrilled by the economic and work ethic evolution in my circle of acquaintance, where so many people I know have gone from talking about their creative endeavors to bragging about how they are leeching money out of the “system”. But those are my complaints.

Time Magazine has their own top ten reasons to consider this past ten years a lost decade. They even include a photo essay of The 10 Worst Things About the Worst Decade Ever. Time’s top picks included The Contested Presidential Election of 2000, 9/11, Invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Market Meltdown, Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme, The Disintegration of Detroit, and Guantanamo.

Fashion retailing guru Mary Portas referred on her show to the decade in question as “the naughties” as in all for naught.

So I just got back from voting. I went to the polling place where I voted in the primaries and I wasn’t on the roster. They gave me a provisional ballot, but I find those things alarming. They also gave me a slip of paper with a list of phone numbers to call to find out what was up with my voter registration. I thought that perhaps my polling place had been changed to my work address from my home address or something like that. Basically, I did not want to submit a provisional ballot, if I could drive across town to another polling place and do a normal one.

The poll workers told me that I did not need to call because my vote would absolutely, definitely, no-question be counted. I called the registrar election day number anyway. A nice woman named Karen went over everything and told me that actually she couldn’t find me in the voter rolls. She gave me a more official State of California Registrar of Voters number to call and told me I should definitely call next week to get it all straight, but that it was doubtful I’d get through calling today.

I was literally shaking at the idea that my vote might not count, so I was going to be sitting in front of the polling place, with one eye on my ballot inside and the other on my finger hitting redial on my Blackberry, until I got through. There was no cell phone reception inside the polling place and it is illegal to remove the ballot from the polling location. Happily, the voice prompts and wait time for the California number were user-friendly and pretty prompt, given that it is election day.

Another nice woman named Whitney helped me this time and she told me that actually I was not currently active in the voter rolls because my registration was flagged for lack of birth location. I had changed something minor on my registration before the primaries, so there was a recent registration form, even though I’ve been voting in the same district for approximately eight years. I actually voted at the same polling place in the primary, but, at that time, they had not processed the new info on my new registration. Of course, I did fill out my birthplace when I registered again, but I was born overseas to American parents, so it is probably that whoever was doing the data entry just did not feel like looking up how to enter a European birth. At any rate, Whitney updated my information and activated my voter registration.

The significant thing here is that, because my registration had been flagged, my vote would not have been counted, if I had not gotten through to the registrar. So, for those of you with the polls still open, please call your local voting registrar, if there is anything off about the way you are or are not listed in the voter rolls. The poll workers will assure you that your vote will be counted, but it may take a little extra effort on your part for that to be true. Please make it.

As a bonus, lots of American businesses are offering presents for those who vote. Here are a few links to free stuff for Americans who perform their civic responsibility:

Ben & Jerry’s will give voters a free scoop of ice cream today between 5pm and 8pm. Krispy Kreme will give those with I Voted stickers a free star-shaped doughnut today. And from now until November 11, Babeland will give those with proof of having voted a free sex toy. Starbucks is giving away a free brewed coffee to anyone who tells them they voted. I don’t think they are requiring proof, like the other vendors, so I guess you can just claim to have voted there, but you really should vote and they do have a kind of inspirational commercial.

I’m going to be honest and say I love coffee, but I love an iced latte with organic non-dairy milk and artisan-roasted gourmet beans. The ice cream site has a nifty store locator feature right on the election promo page, but the nearest location is in the Valley and I’m in Hollywood. Also, I remember when everyone was excited that they opened one of those ice cream shoppes near my college and I found their ice cream overly sweet. One of my neighbors owns a doughnut shop across the street from where I live, so, if I feel like eating high carb and high glycemic index, I think I’ll just give him the few cents a doughnut costs. A sex toy seems like a better gift, but I get tons of cool sex toys free for product placements and reviews as is. So none of the free stuff is really jumping out at me.

I voted because it matters to me as a patriotic American to vote, because it is my responsibility as a citizen. And I did the follow-up necessary to make sure my vote would be counted for the same reason. I voted.

I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote. Please don’t forget. With the current state of the American economy, how you vote for both candidates and issues will impact you directly. This is not an election where you can just think one vote does not matter or assume that the outcome will only impact strangers in foreign lands. Whether you will be able to take care of yourself personally is on the line.

This year, in addition to the much bally-hooed presidential race, there are many really important referendums on many state ballots. In California, the fight over Prop 8 has been a more expensive campaign than any other campaign in 2008, except for the presidential race. This includes senate seats and everything. Proposition 8 is “Shall the California Constitution be changed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry providing that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California?” Personally, I tend to be opposed to just about anything which includes anything about changing the Constitution of either the USA or California. I do not believe the government should be involved in defining the spiritual aspects of civil unions, so I think, as far as the government is concerned, all legally-binding romantic partnerships should be civil unions. Whether specific couples are a particular combination of genders or religions should be none of the state’s business. Nonetheless, one has to vote on the referendum one is offered.

Get your ballot! Street Address: Zip Code: Your address is confidential. From the League of Women Voters of California

If you live in a state other than California, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, key in just your zip code or state postal code and it will return information about election information for your state. If you live in California, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, use the Smart Voter form above. Zip code:

Please read your local referendums carefully. Sometimes, it may be obvious to you what your position is on a hot-button issue like abortion or animal cruelty, but you need to parse out whether that means you want to vote NO or YES. If, like me, you fervently support the right of same-sex couples to marry, for example, then you need to vote NO on Prop 8.

You can confidentially type your street address and zip code into the box at the right to find out what is on your local ballot. The League of Women Voters have provided a site which lists off what is on each ballot. By looking at this site, and also reviewing more sites with information on issues important to you, you can determine how you wish to vote before you arrive at the polls today. Most polls are open from 7am to 8pm in your local time zone’s time. Don’t forget about daylight savings time having happened over the weekend. You can find your voting location via a link off your ballot page on the Smart Voter site provided by the League of Women Voters. For states not listed on the Smart Voter site, Vote Smart has a lot of state referendums listed on their useful ballot measures page too.

I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote. Please don’t forget.

I normally do not bother to vote in primaries, but 2008 has brought primaries with candidates possessing drastically varying policies and outlooks. This year, it really makes a difference which candidates get votes in the primaries. More than 40% of the Democrat and Republican delegates will be assigned today. The following chart will let you know if your state is part of the so-called Super Tuesday round of primary votes. Many states also have referendums on the ballot today on issues which may impact you directly. With the odd exception of West Virginia, most polling places are open until 8pm in the time zone where they are located.

Primaries:
Alabama Primary
Arizona Primary
Arkansas Primary
California Primary
Connecticut Primary
Delaware Primary
Georgia Primary
Illinois Primary
Massachusetts Primary
Missouri Primary
New Jersey Primary
New Mexico DEM Party Run Primary
New York Primary
Oklahoma Primary
Tennessee Primary 6
Utah Primary

Caucuses:
Alaska Caucuses
American Samoa DEM Caucus
Colorado DEM & GOP Caucuses
Idaho DEM Caucus
Kansas DEM Caucus
Minnesota DEM & GOP Caucus
Montana GOP Caucus
North Dakota DEM & GOP Caucus

Conventions
West Virginia GOP Convention

Total Delegates in Play Today: 1681 Democrat and 1023 Republican
Delegates Needed to Win Nomination: 2025 for the Democratic nomination and 1191 for the Republican nomination

By the way, if you are wondering what the difference between a caucus and a primary is, I don’t think most people know. A primary is technically a sort of preliminary election, while a caucus has a more general meaning which can encompass many gatherings of political allies to determine various courses of action. For all practical purposes, for the average voter today, both mean you should head to your local polling place and exercise your right to have impact on the system.

I would like to say that I was aware of Tucker Max long before he was ever in print. On account of how I’m such a spectacularly plugged-in girl on the interwebs. The truth is that there are massively high traffic sites which somehow never have audiences intersect. In actuality, I was stuck in the Phoenix airport when visiting my family and, strangely enough, the Phoenix airport actually has a pretty good Borders. Which even more strangely contained a book with a sleek black cover featuring a gentleman with an antisocial smirk holding, I believe, a bottle and a bottle blonde with her visage replaced with a Your Face Here sign. The title was the clever I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I bought it along with a stack of noir novels.

Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell chronicles the author’s drunken and salacious exploits. He came of age as the offspring of a South Beach restauranteur. From his writing, I gather his taste thus unsurprisingly runs to big-titted blondes with fit but not skinny bodies. Mildly Southern demeanor potentially a plus. Too bad for him that his intelligence level is off-the-scale brilliant. Tucker Max has raised hitting on drunk human sluts to the art form, or perhaps sport, of a more advanced species.

He comes across to some reviewers as a misogynist. He does tend to refer to women as filthy whores and mention that they owe him a rib. The following excerpt from a tale of a horseracing tailgate party drinking contest is a pretty representative exchange from his book:

1:58: She raises the first shot and gives me a toast, “Give me chastity and give me continence – but not yet . . . St. Augustine!” All her little friends laugh and cheer. Amateurs.

Girl: That was really sexist.”
Tucker: No it wasn’t, it was a joke. If I had said that women are nothing but life support for pussy, now THAT would be sexist.”
Girl: “Excuse me?”
Tucker: “If I had called her a hot mouth, that would be sexist too. Or, if I said that the only thing going for her is that she’s 98.6 degrees and has two wet holes, that would be very sexist. But I didn’t say those things, did I?”
Girl: “WHAT?”
Tucker: “Uh oh! Did I piss you off? Are you going to write angsty poetry?!?”

Women in the stories Tucker recounts also tend to say things along the lines of, “I can’t believe how funny I think you are and I’m a girl.” It is my opinion that they are either (a) easily manipulated chicks or (b) missing the fucking point. I’m not delusional, so I’m well aware that some people look at my own work and aren’t aware of anything deeper than quality photos of punk genitalia and gothic boobies, although there is more to it. But I do understand that sometimes pervy sex is the common denominator for a reason. Sure, Tucker regularly points out how much pussy he has thrown at him 24/7 and how great he is at acquiring even difficult pussy. His writing career started when he first launched his site as a dating application. Some chicks will always be attracted to a guy they believe other chicks want. Some guys will be impressed by any dude who claims to have laid miles of pipe. Although I went through a phase in the late 80’s where I liked to tie up blonde boys from good families, that was a long time ago, so some people will undoubtedly be surprised that I am such a huge fan of Tucker Max’s writing that I told my panelmates at the recent SXSW confab that I’d be late getting to the green room for our panel because I was going to watch Tucker Max speak at his first. Then again, readers who really got BLT, the antisocial punk rock humor zine I did in DC, well, I think they will understand the Tucker Max appeal.

The point is not that Tucker Max is a hard-drinking vanilla guy who has frequent sex with varied partners. The point is that his writing is brilliant, articulate, painfully insightful, and totally fearless and he is able to find the humor in absolutely anything. John Hargrave of Zug.com, the moderator of Tucker’s one man SXSW panel From Blog to Book called the author “a promiscuous drunken Tolstoy.” To give you an idea of the Zug perspective, my horoscope on the site today suggests I “Call a hardware store and whisper “stucco” into the phone over and over. “Stucco stucco stucco stucco stucco.” If they hang up, simply call back.” I used to manage an adult boutique where callers sometimes attempted this sort of thing. They might as well have been saying “stucco” for all the impact it had on folks who sold lingerie and vibrators, although only the serious submissives called back to speak with the manager, once I got through with them. At the end of the From Blog to Book panel, John Hargrave was kind enough to pour healthy doses of something called Tucker Max Death Mix. The ingredients of which are apparently Everclear, Lemon-Lime Gatorade, and Red Bull. No wonder so many Tucker Max Drunk stories entail such copious amounts of vomit.

Tucker Max claims to have little formal idea how to write properly. This is debatable as he went to both U Chicago and Duke Law. Both good schools. But he assured his SXSW audience that he has no clue how to use commas, confuses forms of the word ‘too’, and doesn’t really consider himself a writer. He says he tries not to consider his audience when writing, to just concentrate on telling his story in his own authentic way. “I write in my authentic voice,” he says. Oh yeah, and then he works on trimming the fat from his work. But the authenticity is key.

According to Tucker Max’s business card, the name of his company is Rudius Media. According to the Rudius web site, “a rudius is a wooden sword, given by the Roman Emperor to a gladiator upon attainment of his freedom.” It may be happy coincidence that this is probably also a play on the word ‘rude’, but whatever. The best thing about Tucker Max’s writing is the sense of abandonment, the extreme freedom. He’ll tell you his ferocious opinion of some lesser person that himself and he’ll tell you his dick is average in size, although a bit large to put in a midget or a small girl’s colon. He may be coy about whether he has ever done cocaine in Vegas, but he’ll tell you how much hostile fun he is on absinthe. He’ll detail how he drove a mildly inconsiderate girl’s car through the storefront of a donut shop. He’ll pressure all the law firms in Silcon Valley into raising their salaries for summer interns by posting sock puppet conversations with himself on Infirmation.com. He’ll tell girls he is in a Christian rap band and coerce his friends into playing along. He’ll get accidentally pepper-sprayed during the sex act. He’ll bring friends in Special Ops to a politically left wing cocktail party. He’ll get thrown out of IHOP. He’ll get thrown out of Denny’s. He’ll get thrown out of Mickey D’s. And he’ll pretty shamelessly tell you – and everyone else – about it. Although his book has been out for more than a year now, he says it is still selling a remarkable 2,000 copies a week to people like me who are just discovering him. He says he designed the flawlessly appropriate book cover himself too. Tucker Max challenges the SXSW audience to check his numbers on Bookscan because everything he says is true and this is one outlandish tale which is verifiable.

And why, you may ask, was I at the airport, while visiting my family, buying noir novels and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell? All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Actually, I have a pretty happy family, as these things go, but that just seemed like such an elegant literate way to close that I almost couldn’t help myself. Of course, now I fucked it all up with the disclaimer.

I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote today. Please don’t forget.

Sometimes the hardest thing about voting is figuring out where the heck to go to cast your ballot. Happily, the internet makes this all much easier. There are many resources, but one general USA source which looks good to me is Election Protection 365. I usually use the California sites, as I am located in Los Angeles. So I was pleased to find a site with such an excellent polling place locator tool for all states. The site has a political agenda. Most sites with such tools have political agendas.

According to their site, the “People For the American Way Foundation is a premier source of vital information for policymakers, scholars and activists nationwide on the Religious Right movement and its political allies. [They] also engage in legal action as needed to protect or restore the rights and liberties of Americans [and] worked to ensure that the promises enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are made real for all Americans. [They] have provided citizens with the means to engage their friends, neighbors, and elected officials in substantive conversation about how the values of freedom, fairness, and respectful pluralism are reflected in our local communities and national policies. Since its establishment, People For the American Way Foundation has been committed to countering the forces of social discord and fragmentation with an affirmation of “the American Way:” respect for diversity; freedom of thought, expression, and religion; equal justice; and a sense of community.”

Whether or not you personally share those values, PFAW have provided a heck of a useful polling place locator tool and you can use it for free, no matter how you plan to cast your vote.

Brave people fought a revolution, and great men wrote world-changing documents, so you could have the right to representation. If people with the right to vote do not vote, then the system does not work. I’m off to drink an iced latte and review all the referendum info on my local ballot. Please, please, please take the time to vote today.