I thought those of you who don't live in California, and therefore won't have the pleasure of voting today, might appreciate a visual or two.

Of special note here in case you didn't know about this: if you can make out the lettering, you will notice that the names are not listed in alphabetical order. The state reordered the alphabet through a lotto-like drawing. Seriously. They picked balls with letters on them out of a bigger ball. What's more, they did this for various locations throughout the state to avoid accusations of alphabetical discrimination. Or something.

If you didn't know about these, it's because they're much less fun to talk about than the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger likes grabbin' him some ass. If you look at Proposition 54 for more than about 3 seconds and think about all its possible applications, you'll see that it's a truly horrible idea. That doesn't mean it won't pass, but today, I've decided to try to maintain a shred of faith in humanity.

There's an enormous supermarket strike going on in Southern California. It involves 70,000 workers at Albertson's, Ralph's (which is the same thing as Kroger), and Vons (which is also Pavilions, which is also Safeway). I had read that a strike might happen, but I had forgotten when it would happen until I pulled into the parking lot at Albertson's last night and saw workers picketing. I won't cross this picket line; the supermarkets are trying to pull a huge screwjob on their workers, and I'm anti screwjob. They want to make massive cuts in healthcare that would raise premiums for family benefits by at least $800 per year while raising deductibles and co-pays. New hires would get an even worse deal, receiving plans worth a third of the value of plans held by current workers. In addition, there are salary issues: the supermarkets want to freeze the salaries of current workers and substantially lower the salaries at which they hire new employees.

Media coverage of a strike in progress is always much more interesting than coverage of an impending strike. For one thing, you get gems like this:

"The gravy train is over," yelled one man, as he strode from the Eagle Rock [Vons] store, not wanting to be interviewed.

That's priceless. It's almost as good as the time I waited in a remarkably long line at the post office while a man well advanced in years monopolized one of the three clerks; he was one of those people who brings in sixteen packages--each of which needs to go to a different country--but insists on filling out all the customs forms right there in front of the clerk. At 4:50 pm. "I give you $200,000 a year in taxes!" he told the clerk in a voice he obviously hoped we would all overhear. "Well, if you're giving it to me, something's wrong, because I'm not getting it," she returned. I cheered her silently.

Grocery store workers, by the way, aren't exactly rolling in the dough: even long-time checkers make somewhere around $35,000 a year; most workers make a whole lot less. And this is in Southern California, where you could sell a Fisher Price playhouse in someone's backyard for a couple hundred grand if you could manage to get the proper permits.

Then, there are quotes like this one:

A Gelson's in Pacific Palisades as much more crowded than usual. "Business is way up," said Gelson's grocery manager Eric Gibson.

That ticked off Edith Bartz, a Gelson's regular who was forced to circle the lot several times looking for a parking space. "OK, I wasn't annoyed about this strike before, but I am now," said Bartz, from the driver's seat of her turbocharged Audi A4. "I don't have time for this."

I wonder if Edith knows Anna Gitlin?

National Marriage Protection Week is totally gay.

I spent the weekend at Disneyland with beatnikside and stonesheep. We had a great time despite the fact that it was unseasonably hot. It probably helped that we knew just when to plant ourselves at a bar and drink gin and tonics instead of standing in line. Geoff even has audio evidence to prove it. Should you ever fnd yourself at Disney's California Adventure and in need of a cocktail, head over to Ariel's Grotto. It looks like the kind of place where they serve nothing but cheeseburgers carved into the shape of mermaids, but there's a full bar in the back where they go decidedly light on the "mixed" part of "mixed drink." stonesheep and I each had only one gin and tonic, but those two drinks held about a third of the bar's stock of Bombay Sapphire. It'll remind you of the way you mixed drinks when you were 19, but hey, Disney's all about the youth.

Speaking of youth, I ran into my friend Pia on Saturday outside the Jungle Cruise. We went to high school and college together, and our brothers were very close friends. I hadn't visited with her since maybe 1992, and I was so surprised to see her that it took me a while to process that it was in fact her. It helped that she has apparently forgotten to do any aging, and therefore looks just how I remember her looking. There were about a billion hot, sweaty people at the park on Saturday, and the chances of running into one you knew ten years ago in another state have to be pretty slim, but I'm glad we beat the odds; it was good to see her.

Yesterday, the crowds were comparatively sparse, so we were able to walk right on to many of the rides, including Small World--not without ambivalence, as you know if you happened to listen to the pre-ride narrative. I decided it was funny, especially when I imagined the ways Disney might heighten their emphasis on product placement throughout the ride. "And here, we take our little boat through the Taco Bell drive-in! Arriba! Next up, Panda Express." I do believe stonesheep regretted her decision not to fortify herself with a third cocktail. We should have gone to Ariel's Blotto for a four-in-one.

I finished my Disneyland blitz with beatnikside and stonesheep last night; alternacub also made it out for a while on Monday, so we were treated to some excellent stories. We had a blast; not even walking around in wet jeans for a few hours yesterday (going on the splashy river ride a second time was my brilliant idea) could dampen our spirits (ha ha). Today, I haven't managed to do anything but sleep a ridiculously long time, read some magazines, yawn periodically, and watch some baseball. Real life, it seems, will have to wait until tomorrow. Which is fine with me.

Southern California is on fire, and even though the flames really aren't anywhere near our house, the ashes are. If the ashfall continues at this rate, I'm going to make myself an ashman. With a corncob pipe and a button nose. And two eyes made out of something that isn't coal, because I'm thinking that coal won't look so good in a base of ash.

Only an ex-smoker would look ruefully at the particles floating around in the air and think, hell, if I'm going to breathe all this shit, I should do it through a Marlboro filter.*

In other news, I bumped my head on a corner of my desk last night. It hurt, but I didn't realize quite how much until I went to bed and realized I couldn't lie down on my left side. After I woke up this morning, I tried to sit up and heard a click. That was the sound of my neck doing yoga without the rest of me. I do not have high hopes for any day that begins wth Xanax and do-it-yourself physical therapy.

* There is no danger that I will actually do this. I'm just sayin'.