These people I went to school with. They're working in these jobs that, when you tell someone that's what you do, cause people to turn their head to the side and sort of smile - because you're doing something they think is super. Me? They think I'm chasing money. I'll give them that - it's kind of true. But I solve a lot problems and that gets me off, too. And I'm not killing anyone or turning kids onto hobo wine or something - so I sleep pretty well at night.
And I bring this up because I remembered a while ago my friend wanted to start a non-profit that was aimed at registering people to vote. When we said our goodbyes and parted ways I thought about how one-sided the "registering people to vote" issue is - there's no one is really saying "don't do this". Well, at least I don't think there is. Maybe there is. Anyway, my non-profit will do this, kind of - it will encourage discourse about whether it's prudent to be actively courting people into the electoral process who only respond to the idea of voting when it's presented to them by wrestling 'superstars' as being a semi-violent activity. I'm not suggesting we disenfranchise people, I'm just saying that there needs to be something out there that causes people to ask: "Am I really smart enough to be voting?" Registering some of these people to vote is like handing out sample size things of Drain-o: someone's going to be dumb enough to drink it and I don't think you want that on your conscience.
Because here's my beef: new citizens have to pass a test about civics and history and stuff, but I believe there's some natural born citizens who think that George Washington landed on the moon in 1492 and that King John shot Henry Ford in a Lincoln at a drive-in movie theater.
Our ads will be entirely non-political and basically be snippets of history lessons, presented in a convenient, digestible 30 second format that say things like "America is bordered to the north by Canada and to the south by Mexico. Neither of these countries are a part of America. Do not be confused by New Mexico, which is a state in America - not a part of Mexico." It would move on from there, detailing the history of America and its place in the world community, 30 seconds at a time. We will air these ads during reality TV shows, shows about animals attacking, shows with lots of nudity, swearing, yelling or hitting and talk shows where people discuss mostly their relationships and feelings.
Also, I've become increasingly concerned that the increasing ease of picture-taking has caused people to over-photo-document some things while other things have been marginalized. For example, tourist people in Seattle take a lot of pictures that are just the crap you'd see on TV or in a postcard. And if you go to Kerry Park, you see people taking that exact same picture you see on every single postcard. But no weird stuff. I just don't get this at all. Less Space Needle, more weird stuff. No one gives a crap that you saw the Space Needle, okay? That's not a story. A story is you saw a crazy guy start a fire on the sidewalk and cook a hot dog and you have a picture to prove it. People want to hear about that.
