The Village Council

I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact

It was the holidays for the dead again and yesterday was the longest time I've spent sitting inside a cemetery over my grandfather's grave, they gave me this job for the holiday since nobody was up to it this year, I didn't much to do over my grandfather's grave though, I didn't have a book or anything and I all I had for the rest of the day was hamburgers since it was the only thing I could keep on buying inside the cemetery. The hamburger people were only there in the cemetery because there were a lot of the living coming around the place for the dead's holiday, you couldn't make business from hamburgers with dead people around you from the rest of the year though. And the weather that day went from sunny to raining to sunny again, and it almost drove me crazy from sitting there too much, like i began to have thoughts of starting my own telephone company, I knew it was crazy but I still thought of it anyway.

I got back home last night and decided to buy some chicken and chopped pork innards for dinner across the block from home, maybe after having too much hamburgers for the day. They didn't have much people inside the restaurant so I sat by the table facing the road, I didn't feel like sitting in the middle while the whole restaurant is empty and be the center of everything. From where I sat I could see some people setting off fireworks, it wasn't just because of the dead's holiday but we had these national elections some days ago and they were probably so goddam happy they won. This wasn't an election for president or governor or something but it was for these councilmen that run the little communities we call barangay that is scattered around the country a thousandfold, it is something like the village council that runs the smaller community affairs of the government, and because its with the government, they're probably using community taxes to put up those fireworks.

Anyway running for a village council or barangay is one pretty fierce race here because its not like some big scale elections like voting for a mayor were somebody runs against somebody living on the other end of the city and they got the whole population in between to convince to put them to mayorship. Village council elections are closed to a small neighborhood that council wannabes are up against with other wannabes just living across the street, and some want it so badly that it brings out the neighborhood clans fighting for power. Think of it as a pen where two alpha male silverbacks are stuck in for mating season with their hormones charging to overdrive.

And they've got a pretty small electorate that one goddam vote matters like hell to them, like from work I have to walk through three different village council jurisdictions but the ones I belong to at home even sent their propaganda papers as far to my work desk, they're probably are doing a good job back home but hell I didn't vote anyway.