Sunday, September 14, 2008

A small percentage of a telephone

Today I participated in my first-ever phone bank. That's a thing where you put your phone away in a magic box and wait a year or so until you have 1.07 phones. Then you take the extra .07 of a phone and either invest it wisely or give it to the Bird Woman outside St. Paul's Cathedral.

Actually, that's not what a phone bank is, it turns out. I still have only 1 phone. But I did use that phone to call lots and lots of random party-less voters and ask a few of them their opinions on gay marriage and Proposition 8. My stats, which apparently reflected unusual productivity, were approximately 77 dials, 17 wrong numbers, 9 definite "no" votes (yay!), 1 definite "yes" vote (boo!), 1 non-English speaker (Italian, I think, but I marked her as Spanish), and 2 undecideds. Meaning that almost 50 of my calls went to people who weren't home or didn't answer their cell phones. There's got to be a better way to do this! Two people in our bank had over 50 wrong numbers each. Is that really worth the time?

It is, it turns out. We raised a bit of money and got a few volunteers to help out next week. That's enough to make it worthwhile, though not enough to win. If you have time and live in California, please see if you can attend just one four-hour phone bank. They're everywhere, every weekend and some weekdays. If you don't live here, please give some money. Any money at all. The website is linked above, or you can contact me and I'll arrange a donation. The campaign is endearing itself to me by requesting donations of bizarre amounts like $173 or $36.

If you have no interest in keeping same-sex marriage legal in California, and you somehow read this blog anyway (who the hell are you, hypothetical reader?), think of this as a way to mobilize vastly more Obama voters to actually get to the polls in November. Don't let the wackos like my one "yes" voter win this. His reason for voting the wrong way? Marriage should be hard work, as difficult as possible. Gay people want to get married just for "convenience." We should be allowed to adopt children, but not get married; we just don't work hard enough. Really, I'm barely paraphrasing. These are the nuts to beat.

On a lighter note, I was given a free DVD of Dante's Cove at the phone bank. Good God is that show awful. It's like porn, but with tastefully censored sex scenes. Leaving only stilted dialogue and wooden acting behind. At least the people doing the bad acting are hot. Except Tracy Scoggins, previously best known to me for her ludicrous portrayal of gossip columnist Cat Grant on Lois and Clark. Maybe Bab-5 fans will take issue with my dismissal of Ms. Scoggins; I must admit I've never seen it. Feel free to take me to task. Just as long as you also donate some money to No on Prop 8.

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