OK, OK, I’ll write something about the election. I was just giving it a chance to… cool off or something.

The bad news: four more years of Bush. No link for that, because everyone knows it already. The good news: four more years of “Fafblog”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_10_31_fafblog_archive.html#109977682378623607, and that almost makes it worthwhile. OK, it doesn’t, but we can still laugh. Her. her. heh.

Oh, and in case you suddenly feel surrounded by hordes of brain-eating Jesus-talkin’ red-state zombies, please review the “map that puts the election results in perspective”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/. Scroll down to that last map and behold our “shredded country”:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/cartcolorslarge.png, at the very least. It doesn’t change the basic fact that 51% of voters actually seemed to vote for Bush, but it tones down that feeling of “religious uprising” that we keep hearing about.

From a post on “Slashdot”:http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=128064&cid=10700179 today:

_*Your friends are watching you*_

_All around the world, we’re watching you today. We love America, we want you to lead and inspire and show us what democracy and freedom and technology can do. But right now we’re feeling scared, confused, and angry about what your President has lead you to do over the past three years._

_Please, give us back the America we admire and believe in. Don’t turn yourselves into a religious state. Don’t turn your back on the UN and the other peoples of the world – in the end we are people first, American or French or Iraqi or Chinese second. Give us back the America that went to the moon and carried out the Berlin airlift and brought us the IT revolution. Give us back the America of Kennedy’s vision and MLK’s dream._

_And please, don’t let the world’s most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election’s Floridan antics._

If you’re going to be a nervous election-news junkie like me next Tuesday, “USA Election Atlas”:http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/ARTICLES/ElectionNight2004/pe2004elecnighttime.php might be a useful page to bookmark. They have a map of when polls close in each state, and it looks like they’ll be filling in vote counts as they come in over time.

Or, like Ben, you could sleep the blissful sleep of one who doesn’t know what all the fuss about Red and Blue is.

I’m wary of posting links to anything pollish. Not that I have anything against polls, but they do tend to… what’s the word?… lie.

However, I’ve become mesmerized by the “Race 2004″:http://www.race2004.net/ poll summary site, mostly because it has pretty colors. Er, I mean it has a state-by-state breakdown of polling, with predictions of the election winner based on the electoral college, not the popular vote.

Watching the swing states shift from day to day underscores how tight this race really is, but looking at the “if the election were held today” numbers shows how a dramatic victory can be accomplished by shifting a few votes here, a few votes there…

If it gets too much for you, take your mind off it with some comedy: “You Forgot Poland”:http://www.youforgotpoland.com/. Fnord.