So I broke down and voted for Phil Busse. Twice.

What? Twice? Yep.

My younger sister lives in Eugene but she's still registered to vote in Multnomah County. She's a busy college girl and, between school and her Friends DVD box sets she doesn't have much time for PDX politics. Thus, I adopted her ballot and voted for Busse.

And Dennis Kucinich.

Hee. Hee. Hee.

So why Busse? While the results aren't in yet, it's pretty safe to assume we'll see a run-off between Potter and Franesconi in November. And "Busse" is pretty close to "Busey." And you can never go wrong with Gary Busey. Plus, his 100 days/100 ideas campaign was pretty sharp. And, wait, there's more.

OK, time for some online diary-style fun. In January 2002, when I was fresh out of college and struggling to find work in this burg, I accepted a job delivering papers for the Portland Mercury. I figured the gig would somehow, inevitably, lead to a work writing or doing layout for the paper. After a frustrating afternoon spent wandering along McCloughlin in search of their distribution center, I angirly drove back across the river to quit.

After dropping off a pair of magnetic car decals at The Mercury's old office on NW 23rd, I came home to a message from Busse. He called to ask what was wrong and why I had stormed off in a huff. Busse seemed genuinely concerned as I vented about the local job market. He asked me to come back, I said no and he wished me well. Maybe he and his colleagues were sitting on stack of undelivered issues and wanted me to deliver them before properly firing my worthless ass. Or maybe Busse actually (gasp!) cared about some kid too stupid to realize he had a foot in the door.

I hadn't thought the whole thing out before I agreed to work there. A day too late I realized that delivering papers would been a tremendous strain of my already tired vehicle. There was also "no chance" it would have lead to regular writing work. I forgot about the whole thing until two weeks ago when I ran into Justin Sanders, their assistant editor, at a Death Cab for Cutie show. How did he get his start in Portland media?

As a Mercury paperboy.

Let this be a lesson to you all.

Here's to you, Busse. Good luck tonight.