Barack and I were in St Louis last weekend

Last week, we visited LeAnn's brother and family in St Louis, Missouri, unexpected toss-up state in the coming election.

Because Missouri is an unexpected toss-up state, Barack came to St Louis on Saturday.

And I did not even know of his coming before we took the trip. How lucky is that for someone as interested in the election as I am! The candidates do not publicize their campaign trail too much in advance because, especially in the last weeks, they go where they have a chance to overturn the Electoral votes. I suspect, it is also for security reasons. They do not want to give loonies too much time to plan an assassination.
Anyway, pure luck!

Barack spoke under the famous Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River, symbolizing the opening to the westward expansion. Incidentally, for Barack, it could symbolize many other things if you enjoy symbols. The Arch is standing across the highway from a white house. In that case, it is the white courthouse of St Louis. But it is not just any courthouse, it is the courthouse of the infamous Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave who remained a slave after the US Supreme Court declared slavery constitutional in 1856. Barack, about to become the first black US President in the history of the country, was addressing 100,000 people on Saturday facing a white house which is a symbol of the peculiar institution that slavery was.
I am not sure Barack thought of all that when he decided to come speak there, but I enjoy the symbolism.

Anyway, I was in St Louis on that historical day.

We even had a picnic under the Arch. As we were having the picnic, with the kids running around, we saw four or five men in dark suits talking and looking like they were assessing the area. When I saw them, I immediately thought they were secret services personnel planning a political rally. It is funny how secret services personnel do not look secretive at all. They are conspicuous, a la James Bond. You know how different spies can be, right? There is the James Bond type, especially Sean Connery or Roger Moore-style, the most famous spy ever, telling everyone, including the villains, "My name is Bond, James Bond." He might as well add, "I work as a spy in the service of Her Majesty, and I have a license to kill that I intend to use against you after I have jumped from a few buildings and chased you with my fancy conspicuous car. Oh, and by the way, I am great in bed, as your girlfriend is about to find out." And there is the Jason Bourne/Matt Damon type -- or Ferris/Leo DiCaprio in the last Ridley Scott movie Body of Lies. Bourne has a hundred different passports, spends his life hiding, never gives his real name.
Well, the "spies" I saw under the Arch in St Louis were clearly the James Bond conspicuous type, although I suspect they do not have the same qualities as James Bond himself (I am not talking about the good-in-bed part, here, I don't know about that, and did not have time to ask).
Okay, I probably recognized them as secret services personnel also because on the way to Missouri, we had heard on the radio that Jill Biden, the democratic VP candidate's wife, was planning to spend a few days campaigning in Missouri, in yet unknown places.

Anyway, Barack, not Jill, came to St Louis to speak on Saturday.

In the morning, I took the family to the Cahokia mounds in nearby Illinois, Obama state. The mounds -- pyramid-like structures -- were built by Cahokia Indians between 900 and 1200 AD. Besides being very interested in American politics, I am also very interested in Native American history, so that was a great place to go to. Great museum, amazing mound sights. The kids had fun and learned a lot. Great.

Then, we went home and had a nap. Well, Alyenor, my three-year old needed a nap, and I took one too because I was knackered after the crazy day we had spent on Friday at the crazy City Museum.

After the nap, we went to town and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, the loudest restaurant I have ever been to, and after I paid a bill that made me feel like I was a communist government bailing out the freaking place, we went home and went to bed.

What about the Obama rally? you might wonder, dear reader.

Well, that's the beauty of it. I went to the Arch on Wednesday. I saw the spies on Wednesday. Barack came to St Louis on Saturday. Under the Arch where I had a picnic on Wednesday, he gave the most important political rally in the history of the universe on Saturday. At the time he was giving a speech under the Arch, I was having a nap and a lousy expensive dinner in the most annoying restaurant in the history of the universe. I learned about the Obama rally on Sunday morning in the paper. Obama gave a speech in front of 100,000 people, and I was three blocks away! I am writing a blog on this election, and I was three blocks away from Barack Obama and I missed him!

I missed Barack Obama, although I was three freaking blocks away from him! I went to the Arch three days before him!

Barack, Michelle, Joe, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, send me emails every single day, several emails every day, and I did not know Barack would be three blocks away from me!

How dumb is that!!

I am so dumb I might vote Republican, and I am not even an American voter.

Dear reader, if you can't believe what you have just read, it is simply because it is too darn stupid to be true. Read it again.

Now, I need to go blow my brains out.

Adieu.