Gonna get on the microphone down at Wal-Mart.

So then. Another four years, huh?

I heard that the Canadian visa website went from getting two thousand American hits each week to six thousand a day after the election last week. And yes, we�ve all seen the map of the United States of Canada; it certainly seems easier for us to secede and them to incorporate us than it does for all of us to do the visa paperwork. Canada notwithstanding, a great many of us are mulling our options.

People are talking: we are talking about bridging the divide (or not), about Iraq, about reproductive rights (or the lack thereof), about textbooks, about passions, about problems, about noses out of joint. We�re blogging, we�re arguing about blogging, we�re throwing up our hands in desperation.

Then we�re picking ourselves up off the floor, dusting off, and doing something about things. Sarah and her readers raised money for schools. I don�t know where Pamie got the crazy idea that libraries need books, but apparently they do. And Pineapple is putting her career background in politics to good use by offering activism tips.

And me? Well, the temptation, of course, was to lock myself in the house with the Danwich and watch independent films for the next four years, but instead I�m going to defend democracy (and specifically the First Amendment) by taking on a prominent role at my college newspaper.

Meanwhile, we have to remember that the massive Republican get out the vote campaign was not built overnight. Whereas most of the Ds waited until 2004 and the primaries to get their asses in gear (present company included), the Rs kicked things up a notch after Bush didn�t actually get elected the first time around and it paid off. If we didn�t already have plenty of good reasons to vote these buttmonkeys out of office, I can guarantee that we will after another four years. Just wait until the Patriot Act blows up in someone�s face. It may not happen sooner, but it will later.

We need to make sure people are rightfully outraged about something � and there�s something to be outraged about 97% of the time. For example, who the fuck do these contraceptive-withholding, prescription-stealing pharmacists think they are?

As far as I can tell, American women should look forward to a return to simpler times, specifically those before the women�s lib movement. As someone said recently, W does in fact stand for women: barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

Let�s take a closer look at the mess in Texas. The problem begins at school, where new sex education textbooks completely fail to mention contraceptives, proclaiming abstinence to be the only birth control there is. This is a product of the religious/conservative/overexcited parent community that shudders at the thought that anyone anywhere might be having sex, especially any of their own precious little ones. If we don�t teach them about sex, it doesn�t exist. You know, like evolution. Meanwhile, full-grown adults are being refused physician-prescribed birth control because of their pharmacists� supposed moral convictions. So even if you manage to find out about the secret shame of contraception, good luck getting your pills, sinner. And I won�t dignify the claims that Bush may appoint someone to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade with a response, because I refuse to believe that we�d go for a total abortion ban in addition to lack of education and refusal of medication.

When you look at all the ducks together in a row, straight single women may never have sex in Texas again, which is exactly what the government is going for. Don�t let them do that. Get pissed off about this, please.

Let�s hypothesize that a fifteen-year old high school girl in Texas was messing around with her boyfriend one night and things went a little too far. Since no one taught them about contraceptives, they didn�t use a condom and the girl wasn�t on the pill, because even if she knew it existed she couldn�t get her hands on it. Even if abortions are legal n this hypothesis, her parents wouldn�t sign off on one because they�re good Christian folk. That�s their right, but in nine months they�ll be saddled with another mouth to feed and the fifteen-year old girl will be a mother for the rest of her life. She may even end up on WIC or welfare or both; she may meet someone at one of the government programs who encourages her to continue to procreate and reap the benefits. She may have six different children by five different fathers in seven years. Now she and all of them will be doomed to a life of government-subsidized misery ON MY DIME.

Ladies and gentlemen, FUCK THIS. I refuse to raise six children, their mother, and her various boyfriends for the span of their natural lives all because some religious people got excited and revised the hell out of some textbooks, brainwashed the drugstores and banned abortions. That is BULLSHIT, boys and girls. The government�s OX is BROKEN.

While you�re still good and fired up about this, feel free to fire up Word and write a letter. You�ll be making a difference and you�ll be glad you did.

And don�t stop today. Keep writing letters to your elected officials; they work for you, after all. Keep talking to your friends at work, talking in restaurants, talking in bars, talking everywhere you go. We cannot afford to sit on our thumbs for another four years until the Ds trot out another seemingly inoffensive, yet apparently unelectable candidate. I will not stand for a Dick Cheney presidency, y�all. Do your American citizen thing, and remember what Dan Quayle once said: "The future will be better tomorrow."