Just filled out my absentee ballot, and will take it down to the polling place in awhile.

I voted No on the Recall, No on 53, and No on 54, and for insurance I voted Yes for Cruz Bustamante. I almost protest voted for Tom McClintock but I could feel my dead dad, a dyed in the wool union democrat freaking out, so I let that feeling pass.

If The Terminator gets in, we wouldn't be the first state to put someone like him in office. Minnesota voted Jesse Ventura, the wrestler, as their governor a few years ago. Ventura turned out to be a lame duck governor.

I think it will be an interesting dilemma for the GOP party in California if Arnold gets in. Are they going to change their social platform because Arnie is a RINO (republican in name only) after all? There are no other republicans in the state with Arnie's moderate social views. If this was a regular election, Arnold wouldn't even had won a statewide GOP primary and everybody knows that.

Cali is a weird state though. It's so huge and hard to poll. In the 2000 election, the pollsters kept saying up until election day that Bush would win the state and they were so wrong. I mean wrong, big time!

If Arnold gets in, then people in Cali have gotten desperate and are willing to give the other party a try. My birth state, who I never thought would ever elect a republican governor, did so. Hawaii is so democrat, it's the only state that voted for McGovern in 1972.

But the demise of the Japanese economy and a few natural disasters wreaked the state's economy, and after many years of recession voters had enough and voted the republicans in.

Cali might be in a similar state. I don't know. We'll find out.

I just read a post on a bulletin board that said the world must be coming to an end because the Cubs and the Red Sox are in the post season?

For their long suffering fans, it's about time they have their teams end up as winners.

Now if the Cubs and the Redsox are in the world series, then what? It's really going to be the end of the world then.

Even if the A's win against Boston tonight, I don't expect them to go much further. Their pitchers aren't healthy, and their hitting has been spotty. But it's baseball, and it's been a wild season and anything can happen.

Poor Giants! Is there any satisfaction anywhere when their former manager takes his team to their first post season victory in 95 years?

At least the 49ers won a game over their old coach, so that's something to feel happy about at least.

For my modern art history class I went to First Thursday tonight. On the First Thursday of every month, many of the commercial art galleries around Union Square stay open late so working people can view the artworks in their galleries. Many of galleries serve wine and some even have snacks.

It's kind of fun if you're interested in viewing contemporary art and getting free glasses of cheap wine. Plus it's a great for people watching because some people definitely dress for the occassion.

My art history teacher said that if we went to First Thursday and saw artists that we really liked, we could write about them and maybe compare and contrast their styles.

One artist in particular really stood out, Travis Somerville whose work was showing at the Catharine Clark Gallery.

I really liked his work, and out of everything I saw tonight, his stuff really stood out. He definitely has singular vision, and it's very fascinating.

I saw one artist's work, who actually lives in my new neighbourhood, and it was kind of cool because I recognized many of landscapes she painted.

As I was looking at work, I started to get an idea for a story. Many of this artist's painting featured people, and I was thinking, you know how artists are always sketching people in public.

Well, what if you were to walk into a gallery one day, and you saw a picture of yourself on the wall as one the background people in a painting. How interesting would that be.

And what if unbeknownst to the artist, she had capture some kind of dramatic moment in your life. Does this kind of thing even happen? Would the artist have to have permission from someone if they wanted to hang a picture of that person in a gallery. What if it was some kind of random crowd scene, that you just happen to be in?

I don't know. I think it would make for some kind of interesting story line to have a character discover the art in a gallery and then tell the artist that they're the one in the picture, and what was happening that day with them.

Was it american indians who didn't allow pictures to be taken of them because a picture captures your soul? Or was this some kind of Hollywood myth? Anyway, if a photograph can capture your soul, why not a painting?

I suppose I could have the artwork be a photo show instead of a painting show, but I like the idea of a painter rendering the likeness and emotion of the character with paint and brushstrokes.

An artist would just be interpreting the character and what they saw, but the question would be, did the artist get the character right? Or does it even matter that the artist got the character right, it's just an intepretation right?

From Gordon Zaft's blog, I read about this game called "In the Bag" which was from a blog by Terry Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the music critic of Commentary.

Here are the rules "you can put any five works of art into your bag before departing for a desert island, but you have to decide right this second. No dithering: the body snatchers are banging on your front door. No posturing: you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how embarrassing they may sound. What do you stuff in the bag?"

Here are my picks as of this second.

1. cd - The Cure - Wish
2. artwork - Vincent Van Gogh - Vase with 15 Sunflowers (London, National Gallery)
3. book - Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era (MFA publication from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
4. book - The Bible, NRSV
5. book - The Riverside Shakespeare

Interesting, huh?