Good for Us

I did make it the 2006 North Carolina 2nd District County Convention held in the beautiful rural outskirts of lovely downtown Lillington. I have to give the good people of Harnett county their props though, they built a very impressive county court house. And as long as I’m handing out props, I should mention that Yahoo Maps should be noted for their very impression version of the directions to the Harnett County Court House. Sadly, they need to find a moor appropriate outlet for their creative writing because road maps are really not the best place to “get creative”. It would also be nice if the signage was correct, coherent and consistent on the way to the court house. It was not. The signage I encountered was almost as creative as the directions.

If fitting in had been a goal, I should have worn a red, white and blue party dress. Instead I wore a SWTS shirt with jeans and sneakers. These people had dressed up for this. I went because I had said I would and so I bit the bullet and went there because I felt I had to, they seemed to be there because they wanted to be there. It was real it was fun I did not have real fun, it takes a special person to think that pep rally speeches coupled with the sheer wonky joy of voting on resolutions is fun. Participatory democracy is not usually described as “fun”, although, I guess it could be fun to a person who would own a red, white and blue party dress.

I did learn that North Carolina has a pledge to it’s flag, and everyone else knew it! 101 people and they all knew it (when I last was a delegate back in 2004, I think the attendance was more at the county convention, but it was held closer to Raleigh and it was a sexier election cycle). I now know why North Carolina has such poor test results, they waste valuable classroom time teaching the North Carolina Pledge to the students. In all my years in state flag worshiping Texas, I never had to say a pledge to it.

The Party didn’t throw much of a party, but I did get a couple of party favors: a neat-o We-Are-So-Patriotic-Damn-It flag lapel pin and an equally WASPDI retractable paper fan, I also bought a couple of liberals!Yay! bumper stickers and a kewl shirt. I got to be a little bit of a bitch at this years, my vote was the deciding in a little election for some inner-party position. I voted against the guy who ended up losing because at the 2004 conventions he was consistently an aggressive pain in the ass and huge time waster and I punished him for it. He lost by one vote! I was the only one from the Wake County delegation who voted for the other guy. If the other guy turns out to be an aggressive time waster, I’ll vote against him next time: Lesson being, Democrats, don’t waste my time. This year I don’t think I was the youngest one in attendance, I think that is a good thing for the Democrats.

After I got back from the convention, I went to the 2006 version of Raleighs’ Artsploser. Yes, it is a dumb name. I wandered around for a while but sadly saw nothing that I or anyone I could think of needed. I thought I was going to be able to spend some money on the festival tee-shirt but even that wasn’t to be. I mean who came up with the phrase “Grab a slice of art”? Art as pizza? Yes, actually, that was the graphic. No tee-shirt for me. I wore the Democrat shirt to the festival and while no one told me what a cool shirt I was wearing, no one spit on me either. I think that is also a good thing for the Democrats.