BURN!!!

Latest weirdness from West Texas:

Each winter, the local Chamber of Commerce holds a Chamber Banquet to honor themselves and listen to some blowhard rave about the military (last year's theme) or other such nonsense. We attended last year on free tickets and couldn't wait to leave before we even got there.

Well, Banquet 2007 is upon us and some interesting developments have.....developed. For the first time in Banquet history, the entire staff of my workplace (to remain nameless) has been offered free tickets to attend. The guest speaker is Mrs. 39% herself, Anita Perry. Color me ecstatic! Well, I quickly returned my ticket saying thanks but no thanks. My boss has since received many more tickets with the same message: "No thanks, I'd rather pull out my own fingernails." She's a little pissed off about this. She believed that we would kiss her feet in gratitude. I have to confess that I'm a little surprised most people aren't even a little bit interested in going. This is die hard conservo country and Perry is the man.

So does this mean that people are turning on their golden boy, tow-the-line, hair-gelled, unilateral power monger, opportunist? Hmmmmm. I thought, at first, after talking to some other non-interested coworkers that laziness was to blame for the lack of interest. "I don't have a babysitter", "I'm going out to dinner that night" bla bla bla. But after some more thought and conversation with my only sanity source out here (aka D), I realized that this is just unintentional revolt against the flying mofo. People out here bend over backward to look good in front of others. Wouldn't this include being seen at "the" event in town connected to the Governor? So in their own way, the locals are deliberately choosing to have other priorities that night. They may not realize their decision is political, but I think it actually is. D suggested I share this revelation with a somewhat like-minded coworker and blow her mind. I'm rubbing my fingertips together right now in Mr. Burns-ian expectation. "Excellent."

I was so bogged down by how badly these kinds of situations are handled by my employers (another story for another day) that I failed to see the hope beneath the surface. If the blind followers out here aren't willing to go sit and listen to Anita Perry and eat a FREE MEAL at the same time, not to mention see and be seen, then there may be hope for us after all. If this had been during the days of W's governorship, and Laura Bush had come to speak, there's no way that any tickets would have been available, let alone free. People would have stood in line. A recent headline in the local paper proclaimed "Tickets selling fast. At press time, almost 20% of tickets have been sold." To put this in perspective, the banquet is in 3 days and tickets have been on sale for 2 weeks. Look out, gov. Your bread and butter won't even change their evening plans for your wife.

Adios mofo.