‘We’re live with people standing in line. Did we mention we’re live?’

By David McElroy · November 8, 2016

It’s late afternoon on election day 2016. The Status Quo News Network has live coverage:

Anchor: We now take you live to another random voting location that happens to be near the bar where our crew will be hanging out later tonight. Luther?

Reporter: Biff, I am standing live in front of a line of voters at Bluff Heights Elementary School in suburban Atlanta. After a hard-fought election, things are tense. Mr. Voter, could you tell me why you’ve come out on this historic day.

Voter: Well, I’m here to vote.

Reporter: And there you have it, Biff. He’s here to vote.

Voter: The wife and me are going to Waffle House after this. Did you need to know that, too?

Reporter: Biff, they’re going to Waffle House after this. We have that as an exclusive.

Anchor: Luther, it appears people are standing in line there. Are these patriotic Americans standing in line?

Reporter: Yes, Biff, they are. I am told there was a line when they got here — since everybody other than us is getting off work about now — so they have to stand in line while they wait. Some of them are veterans. They’re here to vote and they will stand in line until they do. God bless America.

Voter: We don’t mind none. The Waffle House looked full when we drove by, so we got to wait anyway.

Anchor: Luther, there are a lot of white people there. Does this mean Donald Trump is winning?

Reporter: As one voter left, he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Make American Grate Again,” and it had a picture of cheese on it, so we take that as a clear indication this is Trump country but we don’t know what the cheese meant.

Anchor: And now we go to one of our hateful, partisan studio analysts to fill some time since there’s nothing to actually report. Lloyd, what did you see there?

Analyst: Biff, there were clearly people standing in line and I saw several of them wearing blue shirts. This election is a slam-dunk for Hillary Clinton based on what I see here.

Anchor: Why were they willing to stand in line, Lloyd?

Analyst: When I ran for school body president in high school, we had a table in the hall where people had to line up to wait to vote. That’s what this reminds me of, Biff. Those voters in high school loved me, so they lined up to vote. Just like I’ve been telling you for weeks, these voters love Hillary, so they’re lining up. They’re with her.

Anchor: Did you win your election, Lloyd?

Analyst: No, I didn’t, Biff, but it was rigged and I will never forgive the snide creatures who voted for Bobby Jackson. He was stupid but he was quarterback for the football team.

Anchor: They really stood in line, Lloyd? At a high school? Is that legal?

Analyst: We didn’t have Justice Department observers for that election, which probably explains why Bobby Jackson won. He got Juanita Jennings to go out with him after he won, too. I could have married that girl if the Justice Department had been there.

Anchor: I’ve just been told we need to cut away for some breaking news. Live at Donald Trump headquarters, our reporter has confirmed that the top campaign staff has ordered pizza for dinner. What does this mean? Are they standing in line, too? After we get the details, we’ll be back for analysis and much more. Please keep watching our ads. Don’t turn the channel. In a moment, we’re going live to Trump headquarters. This is live. Did we mention it’s live breaking news? When we come back, Brenda will tell us which toppings the Trump staff got for their pizza and Lloyd will explain what this means about who’s winning. Stay with the Status Quo News Network for more exciting news. Did we mention we’re live?

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Something small just made me happy. The specifics don’t matter, but I found myself smiling and I felt a kind of warm joy filling my heart and mind. In that brief moment of ecstasy, I felt the irrational desire to talk with a particular person. It wasn’t a calculated thought or a rational want. It wasn’t even that I wanted to tell the person about this particular thing. I simply felt ecstatic joy — and I somehow connected that feeling to this person. I can’t explain it. If we’re wise, we’ll pay attention to such moments, because the instincts of our hearts and minds often know more truth than our conscious and rational brains do. The same thing can be true in moments of great pain and suffering. If we pay attention to who our hearts are drawn to in such moments — of extreme joy or extreme hurt — we learn something about ourselves. I don’t know why. I only know that our gut instincts sometimes understand deep truths about ourselves that our rational brains haven’t yet figured out.

It started out as a satirical joke, but some friends liked the idea, so now it’s a real Facebook profile picture frame. If you’ve never heard of Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, let me explain. One of the dumber elements of social media is that it allows people to publicly signal their goodness and virtue to others — without actually doing anything of substance. So you see photo frames around profile photos saying things such as, “Moms Against Racism,” as though they’re standing up against those evil moms who are in favor of racism. It’s meaningless virtue-signaling and it deserves to be mocked, so I made a frame and published it on Facebook’s frame system today. If you go to your own Facebook profile picture and add a frame, then search for Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, you can select it. About a dozen of my friends are using it so far. It’s just fun satire — at least until Facebook decides it “goes against our community standards.” Or something. It’s just a fun way of mocking something that deserves to be mocked.

When I first told you about the project that would become DavidMcElroy.TV, I thought it would launch by mid-May. Since today is the last day of May — and I’m still not close to launching a finished product — here’s a brief update. The graphic above is the latest rough mockup of the format, but it’s still subject to change. Even the logo isn’t yet set in stone. Motion graphics are really difficult when you’re starting from scratch. Sunday night, my camera stopped recording, so it has to be sent off for repair. I have an older camera that I’ll keep using for testing, but I can’t launch without the better one. The audio system developed a low buzz this weekend that has me puzzled. I’ll be taking all the equipment over to the home of a local audio engineer who’s volunteered to help me figure out what I’ve done wrong. On top of all that, my on-camera performance seems to get worse with each test I do. There are days when I think I’m crazy to be attempting this. And in truth, I probably am insane to do it, but being crazy has never stopped me before. I’m at least a month away from launch and it could be a few months. Thanks for being patient — and thanks for all the support and enthusiasm for the project that you’ve sent my way.

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

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