WHEN YOU REGISTER to vote, there's a little box at the bottom of the page that says 'Sign or Make Your Mark Here'. Sign... or make your mark. Now, my first thought was that this is for people like Opie down in Packing & Shipping; Opie who can't be trusted to hold a safety pencil the right way up without nibbling on it, and who needs someone else to guide his hand for his caveman-like, scrawled 'X' (or possibly straggling squiggle). I can just hear Opie's high-pitched squeal of delight as the pencil makes a mark down the page. Pleased, he does it again and again until a new form must be retrieved to replace Opie's enthusiastic damage.

And then Opie gets to go vote.

It was a very depressing thought. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' pretty much has to be for the feral among us; even worse, the voting feral. But then I remembered Prince (The Artist Formerly Known As). If Prince is foolish enough to change his name to an unpronounceable glyph, surely many other Americans must be as well. It made me feel immediately better. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' is for people with symbol names, not Opie!

Not Opie.

To register to vote, or just to sign or make your own mark, go to Rock the Vote and fill in forms old school.