Did anyone catch last week’s episode of The Office?

In the opening sequence, the gang is in the conference room for a meeting. While Michael Scott, the clueless boss, talks, they’re fixated on the TV set. On the TV set is a screensaver DVD logo moving around and bouncing off the edge of the set and the only way they keep themselves sane during the meeting is to watch it bouncing around waiting for it to bounce off the corner.

I laughed my posterior off. Why? Because I’ve got a DVD player with a bouncy logo and whenever Clancy and I are talking after watching something, I watch it bounce around waiting for it to bounce straight into the corner.

I had thought that I was alone in this OCD preoccupation of mine, but The Office has demonstrated that this is not the case. I am suddenly no longer so alone…

I’ve been keeping an eye out for interesting shows that I can listen to while I am working, watch while I am exercising, or watch with my wife. So I gave more new shows than usual a chance this season, and these are my thoughts:

Back to You – Those of us that have been going through Withdrawal since Frasier left the air have a new weekly dose of Kelsey Grammar. As a fan of Grammar’s as well as Patricia Heaton (of Everybody Loves Raymond fame), I was definitely looking forward to this one. The basic storyline is that after having left a TV news show in Pittsburgh, Grammar has been forced to return because of an embarrassing broadcast that became a YouTube sensation. Heaton is an old contentious colleague who before Grammar’s departure conceived his child. Back to You is the season’s new old school sitcom. While sitcoms in general are moving away from live studio audiences, Back to You has embraced the sitcom formula. The show is unremarkable in every respect. It’s competent, somewhat interesting, and quite funny at times, but never spectacular. Grammar’s character is much less likeable than Frasier Crane, which some people really don’t like but that I didn’t have a problem with. Heaton’s character kind of falls flat, but the side characters (the webmaster-turned-manager, the weatherslut, and Fred Willard) help compensate for that. On the whole, the show is quite watchable but not very engrossing. I will continue to watch it mostly because Dad’s watching it and it provides a TV show for us to talk about, which we haven’t had since Frasier went off the air. Grade: C/C+

Big Shots – Some are calling this the male version of Desperate Housewives, and from what I know of DH the label fits. The basic storyline centers around golfing group Christopher Titus (of Titus fame), Dylan McDermott (from The Practice), Josh Malina (Will Bailey from The West Wing), and some other guy that I am not familiar with. The first episode centers around Unknown Guy’s discovery of his wife’s infidelity, Malina’s own marital infidelity, McDermott trying to kick dirt over a prostitution arrest that could hurt his glamor company, and Titus as the henpecked husband. This may be one of my favorite shows of the new season. It’s a nice balance of drama and comedy that keeps me interested. It’s funny enough to keep from being too self-serious and dour and it’s dramatic enough that you really care what’s going on. I also enjoy the cast, which consists of a lot of people where I’ve literally thought to myself “Hey, I like this guy, I wonder what he’s doing now?” at some point this year. Grade: B+

Bionic Woman – Terrible script, mediocre plotting, lacking direction, there isn’t much good to say about this show. I watch it for one reason and one reason only: Michelle Ryan is exceedingly pleasant to look at (the promos actually make her look less interesting than she does in the show). Whereas I typically make a habit of listening to shows without watching them, this one is actually better watched on mute. I doubt that even Ryan can keep my interest for the entire season, but I’ve watched the first three thus far and I’m not sure if the show will last the entire season. Humorously enough, a lot of the fanboys wanted them to Katee Sackhoff because she’s sooper kewl in Battlestar Galactica, but in doing so they would be taking away the only thing on the show I can conceive of as worth watching. Grade: F

Carpoolers – This is the sitcom version of Big Shots. I saw some ads for this from football and caught the first episode and enjoyed it. I enjoy shows that can mash together people that don’t generally hang out with one another and make it work. Too often shows hang on to a certain demographic, be it the swinging twenties, the nuclear family, or the workplace. This is just a group of guys that need each other to access the HOV lane and do what guys usually do when they’re stuck around one another on a daily basis: find ways to get along. It’s goofier than Big Shots so far and I wouldn’t recommend it to people that don’t like outright comedies, but I thought it was fun and funny at times. It has a quirky sense of humor up my alley, meaning that it probably won’t last more than a single season. Grade: A-

Cavemen – I had to catch this one just because there was so much hooplah. I can’t imagine that ABC expects this show to last, I think that they figure that it was the kind of show that made its own publicity and that they could ride that out for a season or maybe two before moving on to something else. I missed the first ten minutes of this show and didn’t particularly enjoy it, but when I went back and watched it from the beginning I found it a bit charming. I’m not sure that I’ll continue to watch it, but I’m going to give it a chance. They could turn this show into something special if they were willing to take some chances on it, but it probably won’t last if they do. Grade: B

Chuck – A computer nerd saves the world, what’s not to love? Very little. The basic premise of Chuck is that a lowly computer retail technician downloads all sorts of secret intel into his brain and does double-duty as a secret agent. It’s implausible, but it doesn’t ask you to take it too seriously and focuses more on lovable characters that a certain brand of viewer can relate to. I’m not sure this one has the audience to make it, but I hope that it does. Grade: B

Dirty Sexy Money – Another one from the files of “What’s he doing now?”, Peter Krause plays a lawyer for an eccentric, wealthy northeastern family. Krause’s father was the family lawyer before him and he didn’t want to follow into those footsteps, but working for the family is the only way he can find out who killed his father. This show is mostly a string of gags in drama format, but they find a way to make it work reasonably well. There is unfortunately a dearth of likable characters and for the most part they aren’t even that interesting, but they partially make up for it with good plotting and the mere presence of Peter Krause and my favorite Baldwin brother. Were it not one of those shows that I could listen to without watching, I would probably drop it, but right now it’s hanging on as a show that I listen to while I am working on my computers, cleaning, or at work. Grade: C+

K-Ville – A post-Katrina New Orleans cop show. What’s not to love? A lot, actually. It stretches the bounds of being realistic but doesn’t compensate for it by being intriguing like The Shield does. I haven’t been given any reason to like the protagonists yet (I’m one episode in) or care about their fate. It also got unnecessarily political along the way. I’ll give it another chance, but I’m not optomistic. Grade: D

Life – Of all the new shows, this one has the most potential. Unfortunately, it hasn’t lived up to much of it yet. The premise is a cop that was convicted of murder is exonerated and as part of his legal settlement he’s back with the police (LAPD, I think). Being in prison has twisted the protagonist somewhat and he’s having trouble adjusting back to the real world. There is a present darkness in him that mixes intriguingly with the thrill of being free. This show could be one of the best on TV and I hope it gets there. Unfortunately, as with Dirty Sexy Money, I fear that they’re going to leave the who-really-did-it thread dangling in perpetuity. It’s been a fun ride thus far, though. Grade: B/B+

Reaper – I saw this one this morning. It’s a bit of a risky premise in the political environment of the last few years, but I thought that Kevin Smith handled it adeptly. He manages to sidestep the questionable theology of it with humor and handles God in an interesting but not preachy way that he failed to in Dogma. As with Chuck, this premise could get old pretty quickly, though. Grade: B+

The Big Bang Theory – Funny, funny. It looks lovingly at Geeks but at the same time doesn’t treat them with kid gloves. There is a tendency when portraying geeks and nerds to treat them with kid gloves where the viewer thinks that they would be great people to get to know if people would just learn to be less superficial. The thing is that geeks and nerds are quite frequently as annoying as heck even when they are good people. TBBT did a great job of balancing the obnoxiousness required for accuracy and the gentleness required to get us to care about them. The best comedies are ones that are willing to be brutal with their protagonists without forcing us to stop caring, and Big Bang manages it beautifully. Grade: A

Here are some questions that y’all can answer here, on your own blog, or not at all:

1. What are the TV shows that you miss the most? Not that you necessarily wish they were still on the air because perhaps they had run their course and had a good conclusion.

2. What TV show do you think was the biggest victim of circumstance or not given a chance to find its market? For instance, last year CBS’s The Class was cancelled despite decent ratings. A lot of people really believed that it could have been The Next Great Show. More popular examples are Arrested Development and Firefly, which had dedicated followings but not sufficiently large ones.

3. What fiction TV show (no reality TV) are you dumbfounded as to its popularity and longevity?

4. Have you ever discovered a band from a TV show? Ever heard a song that you really liked, looked it up, and bought the CD it was on?

5. Are there any shows that you prefer watch on DVD rather than watch in week in and week out?

The AP has an article on groups buying up the domains of the names of their political opponents and putting up critical sites:

inda McCulloch is running for secretary of state in Montana, and a Web site bearing her name makes no mention of why the Democrat is qualified for the job. Instead, it says ‘‘Bad Grades. Bad Candidate.’’

McCulloch’s domain name, www.lindamcculloch.com, was bought by Republicans, which some people are calling ‘‘political cyberfraud.’’ Others say such Web sites are fair and protected under the First Amendment. {…}

McCulloch is unable to do anything about the site, which she used to own and used in her last campaign for state school superintendent. After winning the race, she had stopped paying for the site. It is now owned by the state Republican Party, which bought it earlier this year in advance of the 2008 elections.

‘‘In this day and age of identity theft, taking somebody’s name and using it without their permission seems kind of like going into their house without permission,’’ McCulloch said.

The notion that this is anything remotely comparable to identity theft or fraud is nothing short of ludicrous. A quick visit to not-McCulloch’s site (or not-Bob Keenan’s) and tell me if you think that there is any chance whatsoever of honest confusion.

The questionable journalism of the article aside, it’s an interesting issue.

When Delosa Lt. Governor Steve Moriarty first ran for Insurance Commissioner, he notably did not have a website the entire campaign. I remember reading an article in the paper about how campaign websites were unserious and “pretty useless” (this is the kind of forward-thinking politician that Delosa keeps putting in office). Flash forward to his first run for his current position. On a whim I decided to see what use was being made of his name’s domain. The website actually said something to as juvenile as “Steve Moriarty is a big poo-poo head”. Then below it you said “If you’re running for office, you should hire a firm to help you unless you want your site to be used by your opponents to tar your name. Call our Colosse office at 555-555-5555.” Members of both parties were on their client-list, so it was more that Moriarty was an easy target than part of any political issue.

It was a pretty ingenious trick that eventually made the papers and got the web firm considerable publicity.

Though I don’t plan on running for office, I actually do own my name’s domain. I’m not really doing anything with it and I don’t know that I ever will, but I will never let my dreaded enemies, whoever they are, get a hold of it.

There has been a lot of construction on Interstate 31, which connects Santomas (where I live) and Almeida (where I work). I-31 bears the weight of most of Santomas’s traffic and they’ve been doing a lot of construction on it. Construction in Deseret was very cumbersome and problematic. There were only so many months throughout the year that they could work on I-13 out there, so when they were working on it they seemed to be doing so 24/7. In Santomas, however, they’ve managed to make construction on the primary artery of this town rather painless by working on it from 8pm to 6am and keeping all of the lanes open the rest of the time. My hat goes off to them.

The downside to this arrangement is if you happen to be on the roads between 8pm and 6am, as I was the other night.

If there’s one thing worse than sitting in traffic and going nowhere for minute stretches, it’s doing so when your car conked out on year earlier in the day. Every time I had to stop I had visions of being that bozo whose car breaks down in the middle of rush hour. Luckily, no such thing occurred.

Santomas and my hometown of Colosse are opposites, in a way. Colosse is an order of magnitude larger than Santomas, but commute times are roughly the same. It takes you forever to get from Point A to Point B within Colosse, but traffic is rarely so bad that you’re not moving except at certain interchanges and when you’re going with traffic right in the dead of rush hour. In Santomas, you can spend forever in the car going absolutely nowhere and it’s ridiculous. When there’s no traffic (and no construction) you can get anywhere in town within 10-15 minutes (in Colosse going across town is a 45-minute trek at best).

I think that my need to be moving in the car is almost pathological in vigor. I go absolutely crazy if I’m not moving. Right now when coming back into town traffic stops when coming back into town at 6pm. That is to say that even when you’re not in the dead of rush hour, and you’re going into town instead of out of town, you’re still stuck going nowhere. It takes me about 30 minutes to get 40 miles or so from Santomas to Almeida, but then another 20 minutes to get the remaining two miles.

I’ve found a back way that I often go when it looks like I’m going to have to stop on I-31 coming back into town (just about any day that I leave work by 5:30). It’s got stop lights, it requires me to go east when I need to be going west, and there’s traffic there, too. But you know what? I don’t care because at least I am moving or at a stop light.

A bit curious is that though I hate being stopped on the freeway, I don’t mind stoplights so much. At least then I know that we’re all taking turns and soon I’ll be getting my turn. This laid back attitude only lasts as long as I am through the light after one cycle. When I have to wait two or my cycles, I’m pathological again.

Anyhow, my detour takes me more time than staying on the freeway would. It also takes me through the worst parts of town. I’ve had to start rolling through a particularly stop sign lest I be approached by a prostitute. Wire-like drug dealing scenes are pretty prevalent. But compared to being stuck on the freeway and not moving, it’s practically paradise.

I stopped by the coffee shop after work to work on the November Novel (remember that, from almost a year ago?). I was distracted by the loud voice of a fellow with some rather ill-informed political views and the guy in front of me who was in the process of getting his heart broken.

The coffee shop was unusually busy, so I had to take a table facing the window. Just outside the window was a conversation between a man and a woman. Almost immediately I could tell something was wrong. His mannerisms while talking to her were almost exaggerated. His look was abrasive and hurt.

The guy was severely overweight. He was probably the most overweight person I’ve seen in my fifteen months in Estacado. He probably would have had difficulty fitting into two airline seats, much less one. She wasn’t thin, but her weight (far less considerable than his) appeared to me to be more firm. She looked like the sort of person that had a stocky Germanic build that she couldn’t turn into a trim figure so she figured to do some anaerobic exercising to make the most of what she was stuck with.

I am hard-of-hearing. One of the ways I compensate for that is lip-reading. I am half as likely to understand what someone is saying if I’m not looking at them. But I pretty much only read lips when I’m getting some sound. In this case I could only see and couldn’t hear a thing, so I could only catch part of what was being said.

I partially wish that there hadn’t been a window between us. If they could see me then I would have had to not watch and work on my book. On the other hand, maybe I would have just kept my eyes glued anyway.

He said that he loved her several times and he also appeared to be saying that she loved him, though I don’t know if he was saying that he knew she really loved him or perhaps that she had said so. He made a big presentation out of getting up from the table and walking to his car. She didn’t budge. He stole a couple glances backwards as he walked away, trying to see if she was going to try to stop him. She called his bluff and he returned to the table saying something about finishing this now.

Throughout the whole conversation she was pretty rock-faced. She didn’t look indifferent, but she looked decidedly unaffected. The further the conversation wore on, the bigger the ball of emotional goo the man became.

I’m not sure what the backstory was. I actually got the impression that it was something different than a standard breakup. My guess is that they didn’t actually date but that he really, really wanted to. I’d further guess that he saw her extra weight and thought that was something that they had in common even though the volume and type of weight was completely different. She looked like the kind of person that would befriend anyone and that was paying a price for it. Frankly, I have difficulty imagining the two of them actually dating. I have difficulty seeing anyone date the guy, but then again I saw him at a time when he wasn’t as his best (I wouldn’t want to be judged while my heart was getting broken).

It’s possible that they did date, but they almost certainly split up before this conversation. It came across more as Part Four In A Seven Part Series than the spontaneous combustion of a heart. This looked more like an attempt at closure. A failed one.

Perhaps one of the reasons I couldn’t take my eyes off her was that Eva and I broke up the second and biggest time in a coffee shop much like the one I was in. It was a Part Six in a Seven Part Series. We didn’t make the scene of it that this couple did. In fact, we chose a public place precisely for that reason. It wasn’t until she took a trip to the restroom that things fell apart. I remember something about Tom Ridge in the newspaper that I was looking at while she was gone. When she came out she was crying, so we decided to go shopping and spent the next hour or two shopping, avoiding while we were there, picking up some scented candles.

For the most part we were able to accomplish it with some dignity. The indignity came before and after. By the time we got to that parking lot, she and I were already over and we both knew it. The scene yesterday with the Big Fella was about a guy that hadn’t finished fighting yet. Even when they both went their separate ways, there was a look of “not over” in his eyes.

I remembered the same look from Julie when I split with her. She actually screamed at me once during the discussions “No! It’s not over!” I came really, really close to buckling. I wanted to tell her that whether I actually said it was over or not, the parts that mattered were definitely over and there wasn’t anything either of us could do about that. Though he remained defiant at their departure, I do hope that the Big Fella realizes to the extent that they had anything, the parts of it that mattered are over.

“How pathetic am I?” I saw him ask himself. Were I an actual part of that conversation, I would have told him that was a choice as much as a question.

I am not a particularly heavy drinker. Having grown up with a mother that sometimes veered into borderline alcoholism, the notion of being in a perpetual drunk state scares the living crap out of me. Further, I don’t really like the taste of any alcoholic drink except maybe sissy wine coolers. So by and large I consider my alcohol-drinking habits to be pretty normal. When it comes to people that I’ve lived with, however, it’s very abnormal. All three of my college roommates Hubert, Dennis, and Saresh were non-drinkers. My post-college roommates Karl and Dennis (same guy) were non-drinkers. My wife? Non-drinker.

I respect non-drinkers on the whole. Society would be so much better off if there were more of them. But as the drinker in a crowd of non-drinkers or in mixed company, it can be decidedly inconvenient.

My friends Kyle and Clint, my college roommate Hubert, and I were all at one point part of a small little production company. We were contemplating special features on a DVD and decided that it might be funny if we all got piss drunk and filmed ourselves. We’d make it an easter egg or something. Kyle, Clint, and I were drinkers, but Hubert was not. Hugh wanted to be included, though, and this presented a bit of a problem. He wanted to pretend to be drunk, which we were all quite unsure about.

I don’t remember a whole lot from that night. One of the things that I do remember, however, was when I spontaneously decided that I would become a spokesman for Delosa’s Finest Beer. I held the bottle of DFB in my hand and said, “Delosa’s Finest… great f***ing beer!!” Then Clint did the same thing. Hubert wanted to join in, but I said, in front of the camera, “You can’t, man, you don’t drink!!!!” That kinda teed him off because he was pretending to be a drinker. Kyle then got in front of the camera and we did a “great f***ing beer!!” together. A couple minutes later Hubert stole the camera and did his own rendition of my Shakespearesque line. His faux-stumbling looked far too deliberate. His fake-slur was awful. Dead silence. Then, in the back behind the camera you can hear Clint exclaim, “Oh my god, he killed our ad campaign!” That brought back the laughter and we commenced acting stupid in a non-deliberate, believable manner. Except Hubert, who started to pout.

All of the material was likely entirely unusable, but we wanted the ad campaign portion of it. Unfortunately, Hubert said that the tape had accidentally been taped over so we never got to see it.

In another case involving Hubert, Dennis, and Karl, we came up with this game to play a drinking game with F-Zero, a challenging and unforgiving Nintendo game. The thing about F-Zero was that unlike other racing games, one of the challenges was just to survive the course. There were 100,000 ways to fall off the track or run out of energy if you were sober. The idea was that we would make a reverse-drinking game out of it. In most drinking games the loser has to chug, but in this case the winner would. That would make it easier for someone else to win next time and they would drink. By the end everyone is drunk and going two miles an hour try desperately not to veer off the track.

The entire game, though, requires that everyone drink. Hugh absolutely failed to understand this and kept trying to come up with ways that he could play (“I’ll drink Diet Coke instead!”). Dennis, meanwhile, accused us of rigging the rules just to exclude him. Karl said he would play and drink, but we were a bit cautious about serving him the first alcohol he’d ever had in his life when we didn’t know if a sober person would be there if he had a reaction. Unfortunately, drunken F-Zero was basically banned from the dorm because of all the ill-will. Dave, Clint, and I played it one New Years. I played it on a couple other occasions with a girl that I was sorta dating, though it wasn’t as fun with two people, and every now and again some of us would have access to the dorm when no one else was there and we’d play. The second Hugh came in, though, one of us would dart (stumble) to the TV and turn it off so he would think that we were just drinking rather than playing some sort of game that he would have to be left out of.

Of course, having non-drinkers can be awfully handy at times. Before he turned 21, Kyle was our constant designated driver. When he turned 21, he celebrated by we mourned.

We generally have good service here at Casa de Truman, but it tends to get a little spotty late Saturday night. In fact, it has a habit of going down within an hour or two of midnight in either direction. Every time this happens I freak out. Not because I can’t handle having the Internet down for a short little stretch, but because midnight Saturday night is when cable companies shut off accounts for non-payment. The automatic payment with my cable company is always spotty and I freak out thinking that maybe there’s been another missed payment.

You’d think after this happening week in and week out I’d calm down about it, but you’d be wrong.

I miss the old days when you could be assured of getting at least an automated phone call before anything gets shut off.

A lot of men are of the belief that a lot of women are attracted to married guys. An episode of Seinfeld I ran across recently had George wearing a wedding ring for the sole purpose of pucking up ladies and he had greater-than-usual success.

There are doubtless some women out there that are attracted to married men. Maybe they’re also married and are looking for something on the side. Maybe they’re attracted to what they can’t have. Maybe they want to get married and can’t find a guy that wants to get married and the ring represents someone that was ready to commit. By and large, though, I think the perception that married men attract women is off-base.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the wedding ring actually sent a message of safety. If a guy is wearing a wedding ring, he’s less likely to ask her out. Her being nice to him is less likely to be construed as an invitation for him to ask her out.

So let’s say that an ordinarily looking man approaches an attractive woman to strike up a conversation. She’s probably used to being hit on and her first thought about the guy might be that he is going to do just that. She’s not particularly attracted to him, so she may feel that she needs to be careful not to give him anything he can use later to say “she was totally flirting with me”. She needs a degree of space. It’d be a bad idea to be at all flirtatious with him even in what she would consider a harmless way. You never know how a man is going to react.

Take the same scenario and put a wedding ring on the guy and it’s a vastly different picture. Yes, he may be looking for an extramarital affair. He could be a sleazebucket. Maybe he’s separated or in an unhappy marriage. If she gets wind of any of these things she is likely to put up some space. Absent these things, however, she is probably free to talk to him in the friendly manner with which she might talk to a female coworker. She can talk to him as a person without worrying about him as a potential suitor. I could see how that would be a load off her mind.

Meanwhile, he is probably thinking that he would have a chance if he were single and wondering why he couldn’t get these kinds of conversations when he was. That, I think, feeds into the perception that women are attracted to married men.

On the other side of that coin, being a married man with a wedding ring, I can more easily talk to women out of the blue. I do not have to worry about whether she thinks I am hitting on her or not. I don’t have to worry as much about saying that one little wrong thing that would make a relationship impossible. When I was single I would hold back even with women I wasn’t interested in simply because I didn’t know if I might become interested at some future point. None of this is a concern to me a married man. So I talk to more women. A woman out there or two might even be thinking that it’s too bad that guys like me are taken… but were I not married I would be a lot more self-conscious about talking to her in the first place.

The third factor that comes to mind also has more to do with what the man is thinking than the woman. When I was single, I would spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decode feminine signals. If I was interested and looking for a relationship, I would do a thorough analysis of signs that she was interested and signs that she was not. I would do this because I felt that I had to in order to avoid making a fool out of myself or missing an opportunity. I’d miss an opportunity if I didn’t realize that a woman was interested in me when she was. Likewise, though, if I thought she was interested and she wasn’t there would be a price to pay there as well.

Being married, though, means that I am absolutely free to assume interest whenever and wherever I like. I don’t have to worry about any false positives because I would never act on it anyway. If I talk to the nice young lady in front of me in the food line, I can go away thinking to myself “She totally wanted me” without having to actually examine whether there was any truth to that perception. I can assume all the women in the world would be interested in me and there would be no price to pay due to my fidelity.

I think all three of these things play into the perception that a wedding ring attracts women. A lot moreso than the idea that a wedding ring does, in fact, attract women.

On the subject of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, I’m reminded of a story I recently shared over at Half Sigma. A couple, actually.

A couple hours from Colosse in Firehole County is Delosa A&T State University, the state’s black agricultural and technical university. Firehole County is one of the more conservative in Delosa, but periodically Yellow Dog Democrats in effort with A&T students can get a Democrat election. The state’s District Attorney and County Registrar released a joint statement declaring that because they were not permanent residents, most A&T students would not be allowed to vote in county elections. Only those that had officially changed their address would be able to do so. As you can imagine, black leaders, Democrats, and the media cried bloody murder. It invoked imagery of when white election officials were keen to prevent blacks from voting at all.

What’s a bit ironic, however, is that one year earlier there was an open race for the mayoralty of Colosse. The leading candidate was a former Colosse County Democratic Party Chairman. When he held that position, he lobbied election officials to prevent soldiers stationed at the local army base from being able to vote unless they had declared residency. As you might expect, his Republican run-off opponent and his supporters cried bloody murder. At a time when our soldiers were fighting for democracy abroad, they were being denied democracy at home.

At the end of the day, the A&T students and soldiers were both allowed to vote regardless of where they officially had residency. The former CCDP chairman became Colosse’s mayor and Firehole County remains solidly Republican.