Lori and I spent yesterday afternoon at an unnamed location visiting with some of our more politically radical friends. I only vote when absolutely necessary myself, and when I do I'm the kind of wise guy who votes Libertarian just so I can be smug about it at parties. But I can dig it, their thing is righteous and I'm with 'em all the way, so when they hold a bake sale to raise money for Kerry's campaign, by god I'll buy some of those purple heart-shaped sugar cookies.

I never considered it before, but a bake sale such as this is a highly illegal activity. We live in dark times, so these opposition guerrillas have to quietly set up in a densely populated area for only a few short hours at a time to avoid capture. In this case, by the kiddie wading pool at a local park, where a steady stream of joggers, strollers and roller-bladers ensured a quick turnover of pastries. The idea is to sell as many baked goods as possible, then cut out fast and split up for several weeks if necessary to elude the goon squads. But Kerry's campaign is important to these democratic warriors, so they brave certain torture and humiliation at the hands of Republican forces to scrape up money for their beloved Kommissar.

Spitfire radicals all, these swashbuckling bake salers were all packing guns, but each had only one bullet -- for themselves, if they were captured. They are very aware that Bush's braintrust is proficient at placing spies in the ranks of the rebellion, so they trust no one, not even each other, and every member of the organization is identified with a code name and number (i.e. "Dandelion, Zero Six"). But there is rousing camaraderie amongst the bake salers, and they exhuberantly push their donuts and lemon squares.

"Every snickerdoodle we sell buys one more bullet to aim at George Bush's head," our anonymous friend declared. "We will choke him to death with those mitten-type things you use to pull hot things out of the oven, what are those called?"

"Oven mitts?"

"Yeah, our fucking oven mitts! Goddamn!"

Lori and I felt privileged to be in the company of these dedicated men and women. We purchased some delicious homebaked goods and helped bring our country that much closer to a perfect, pure reign of liberal feel-good humanism.