Manassas Madness

See these people? These are my friends (I'm the doofy looking one holding the sign). We made a trek to Manassas, Va. last night for Obama's last rally of his campaign. It was a rough road and my poor little vocal chords are paying for it today, but I'm so glad we were crazy enough to attempt this. 

Basically, we set out around 4:00, because Brian (tall guy in the back) used to live in Manassas and knows the ins and outs of NoVa traffic. (I do too, I just pretend that part of the country doesn't exist) Smooth sailing until exactly twelve miles away from the site of the rally. We sat in traffic for two hours waiting to go twelve miles. Between mumblings of how much I hate Northern Virginia and yelps of, "can we drive? YES WE CAN!" we weaved our way to Manassas. The cops there failed to mention anything about parking and I was lucky to have a friend in Manassas from my Wolf Trap intern days last summer. She let us park at her house and walk to the fair grounds. 

From there, we proceeded to fight our way to a place where we couldn't really see unless we were on Adam's shoulders and the junior senator was an hour and a half late. He blamed Dulles, too, which is nice because I blame Dulles for most of the problems in my life even if the area isn't at fault. He did his campaign bit, told us a story and talked for a little about how John McCain has been an excellent opponent and was classy enough to offer condolences about Obama's grandmother. He got the crowd all riled up one more time and headed back to Chicago to be with his family. 

I couldn't believe I was standing amongst the crowd that attended Obama's last rally in his campaign less than 24 hours before one of the most historic elections this country has seen. It was a truly incredible thing. 

One more thing before I leave you for coffee and democracy (Go vote today, kiddies): 

Have you ever seen somewhere near 80,000 people in one place? It's a pretty incredible thing. You don't see race or income or gender...you just see people. Neat, huh? 

Happy (hopefully) Election Day. Whatever choice you make, make it for the right reasons. 

I dream of the First Amendment, what do you do?

Well, today's post was supposed to be reserved for a few heart-warming paragraphs about some of my feelings about blogging and the great internationality of the whole thing. Some things my reader euthymic pointed out in a comment to me a few days ago. 

However, things changed when I had a very vivid dream about none other than the First Amendment to the Constitution. Oh, how proud my Media Law professor Nerissa Young would have been! I'm not sure what the whole thing means, I can only assume that it is pointing out how truly cynical I am about my country's freedom of the press and observation of this amendment as the 2008 presidential election draws closer. 

Regardless, I was a student again (possibly a cry for classes to start...) and I had written a feature article for my journalism professor, Dr. Jim Lewin about John Lennon and the close relationship he had with the music he wrote for the Beatles and also for his solo career. In it, I had quoted George Harrison (deceased, I know) and a few of my other favorite rock journalists: Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone and Chuck Klosterman, included. (How. Incredible.) I don't know how I interviewed them, I don't want to know how I interviewed them...but I did. At first, Dr. Lewin accused me of plagiarism, but I begged and pleaded and assured him I would never dream of doing that (I wouldn't...plain and simple). Instead, he accused me of writing something inappropriate with the intent to cause an uprising. Now, John Lennon was one of the most peaceful people of this past century and never deliberately tried to cause an uprising (He was just amazing...Mark David Chapman...you jerk!) so I have no clue why I was accused of these crimes. 

The to the point version is: I was going to be beheaded for what I wrote. 

Crazy? For sure. 

The dream continued with my mad dash to fight the crimes against me. I was running around Shepherd's campus spouting off the First Amendment verbatim (again, Nerissa Young would be impressed...) and trying to get someone to listen to me, saying it was my pursuit of happines, and not behead me. A few random members of Shepherd University's music department were trying to help me get out of my punishment and the dream ended when I was printing off a copy of the First Amendment in the music department computer lab and the printer jammed ten minutes before my beheading trial (the printer there ALWAYS is jammed, out of ink or out of paper). 

It's either telling me that I'm secretly afraid of all you readers in cyberspace reading this or that I should stop reading CNN.com election coverage right before bed. 

Thanks for reading. Please don't behead me...