Inappropriate Content: The Trail©

At precisely 1:17 p.m. today, campaign workers at a dozen West Virginia offices gathered for a conference call with Senator Edwards. And by conference call, I mean we all got to sit quietly while Edwards gave a five-minute motivational speech. I was hoping we'd at least get the chance to introduce ourselves and I could say, "it is my goal to have hair half as shiny as yours, sir."

My boss, Lida, holding a large rock inscribed "Lida's Bushwhacker."

She found it sitting on her chair this afternoon and no one in the office has any idea where it came from. It's like sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch, reaching into your backpack and finding a foot-long zucchini without knowing where it came from. That is not a hypothetical.

Went to the gubernatorial debates yesterday night. On hand were Joe Manchin, the establishment candidate who will soon be elected governor by a powerful party machine that controls virtually all of West Virginia politics, and some guy who wasn't taken seriously because he said virtually all of West Virginia politics is controlled by a powerful party machine.

I've met Manchin a couple of times now. The most recent is below, at the Labor Day rally I worked. I posted an account of that earlier. Kerry arrived two hours early, freaking out everyone in the press advance unit, for whom I was volunteering. Yadda, yadda, yadda, I drove a car backwards through Kerry's motorcade, which was not something that the Secret Service approved of.

Anyhoodles, soon-to-be-Governor Manchin arrived on time, and so was able to give a rousing speech to the stragglers in the crowd and some volunteers who were cleaning up. He maintained his dignity because it's not like there's any chance he's gonna, y'know, lose.

And finally, I have become the go-to boy for flyers the last few days, making a half-dozen flyers for various events. I made the program for a dinner tomorrow where Madeleine Albright will give the keynote address; something that would be even cooler if I got to actually go to the dinner.

Check out some of my flyers here, here, here and here. And this one, which is really, really creepy: in the picture of Kerry, right above his left shoulder sits someone who looks exactly like a friend of mine named David Darais—except that David Darais is 16 and Mormon, and therefore unlike to be drinking beer in a bar in Madison, Wisconsin with a presidential candidate, especially a democrat.