Last night, I fulfilled a fantasy! No, not one of *those* fantasies...

I was in the Civic Center Muni Metro Station about 9:30 PM.  Just as the mechanical voice announced that the M car would arrive in four minutes, an old hippie approached me, bearing an armload of initiative petitions. In the practiced voice of a professional signature gatherer, he asked me to sign them.

People don't realize how much money there is to be made in signatures.  Special interests pay from twenty-five cents up to a dollar per signature, depending on how large their campaign warchests are, but the signature gatherers go out of their way to give you the impression that they are just civic-minded progressives trying to make the world a better place.  Yeah, right...

Usually, they lead off with the petition that pays the most per signature.  In this case it was an initiative to increase cigarette taxes to pay for a raft of liberal causes (emergency rooms, day care, etc.)  Normally, I tell signature gatherers that I am opposed to raising taxes on principle and hand them back their petition unsigned.  But last night, the devil was in me.  I feigned interest. The petition gatherer handed me the clipboard. I guess he thought it was such a no-brainer, pitting Big Tobacco (boo, hiss) against pre-school and day care (yay!) that he said: "while you sign that petition, let me explain the other ones".  I dutifully took the pen from him and as he blathered on, wrote "this is a stupid f*cking prop..."  Just as I was about to write "...osition" the M car came into the station. The doors hissed open.  I said: "gotta go" and handed him back his "signed" petition.  He looked at what I had written and I saw a look of outrage on his face.  I heard him say "You f*ucking..." then the doors hissed closed.  As the car started to move out of the station I saw his lips mouth the word "asshole".  Mwahahahah!