I mean, it's just such a pain in the ass, you know? As if voting weren't annoying and frustrating enough already, they moved the entrance to the polls in my neighborhood all the to the BACK side of the school. So not only do I have to walk the entire three blocks to the voting place, now I ALSO have to walk the whole way around the school. By the time I wait in line to vote, vote for some jerks, walk all the way around the school again, and walk home, it might take as much as thirty or forty minutes. Christ on a cracker! It's just too damned inconvenient.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "That Tankard sure is one lazy, soulless person, putting so much value on petty momentary convenience. This is one of the most important elections in the history of civilization, and Tankard is more concerned about getting in an extra game of Age of Empires than about affecting the fate of his country and the world." Well, you have a point there, but what the hell, I'm taking my example from the politicians and society.

As the most obvious example, look at the way your average politician -- and society in general -- views the state of the environment. Everybody knows that the earth is warming up. At the very least, the effects will be dire just a generation or two down the line. But changing the way we pollute the air and water, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas, controlling chemicals and heavy metals -- all this would just be too hard -- inconvenient. It would mean a disruption of the economy -- inconvenient. It would mean we'd have to cut down on the number of clickers we have sitting on the table next to the La-Z-Boy -- inconvenient. Cheesh! Forget about that. Our progeny will just have to learn to enjoy living with gas masks when they're out of doors if it means I have to sort colored glass and all those fucking numbers on plastics and lug the shit all the way out to the curb to be recycled.

I know our kids won't have the oil they need to make plastics and medicines. But, holy hell, think of the inconvenience if we had to stop driving the two blocks to the grocery store or taking our own shopping bags! And imagine what a pain it would be if we had to actually live within, say, ten miles of where we worked! Talk about unrealistic! Well, the grandkids can just wear a few more sweaters when there's no heating oil, and they can learn to like it.

Yeah, so the dollar is in the dumper. So what? Economists tell me that a nice deep, long recession would shore it up and that very high interest rates would be short-term painful but long-term useful. Well, all that's very fine as long as it doesn't happen during MY lifetime. Let the next generation or two worry about a t-shirt costing $132.99 -- I can't be bothered -- American Idol is on! I'm already putting up with a lot of abuse, don't ask me to put myself out for a bunch of rug rats who never did anything for me.

And you know what? If we want to win the Global War on Terror and shit like that, we can't have Constitutional restrictions making it difficult for the President to track down those bastards. He or some NSA agent might have to work past six p.m. or on a Saturday. Who's going to want to take a job like that? Make it easy for our brave communication monitors. Make it convenient for them. Tap my phone as long as I can make my call from the meat department. I really wasn't using my civil liberties today anyway, so why should I worry whether my kids have their Miranda rights read to them when they're caught criticizing the government or some such crime.

All this crap about worrying about the future is just too damned difficult, too inconvenient. But still, I feel kind of guilty about all this, so I suppose I'll go ahead and trudge on down to the voting booth come November. As long as it doesn't interfere with driving out to TGI Friday's for Happy Hour.