Summer driz

Summer drizzle arrived last week, has lasted five straight days. Only thing unusual is that it didn't start a month ago.

Not much to report out here, except that on Saturday night I got a phone call from a real live political poll. You know how everyone complains "They never called me before compiling those bogus poll numbers!" Well, on Saturday, they called me. I answered a straight Democratic, anti-Bush line, except for saying I was "very religious" -- that ought to throw them off.

And there was something interesting: a series of questions based on the premise that the initiative process has been hijacked by well-funded groups (also known as the feared "special interests," or at least that's what the pollster called them). In California you can get just about anything on the ballot as long as you have x-thousand signatures of registered voters; that's led to such disasters as Prop 13, which has eviscerated public education in the state; Prop 6, which would have outlawed homosexuals in the teaching profession (that lost, in 1978); and propositions on things like "three strikes and you're out," which sets mandatory prison sentences for three crimes, and on making English the official language. All kinds of crap like that. Also, it means you keep being buttonholed by signature-gatherers, so now if I see someone coming at me with a clipboard and asking if I'm a registered voter, I cross the street. The heck with that.

So the next time the results of a "Field Poll" are released, check it out: that's me, part of the Democrats' convention bounce.