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I grew up in a house with lots of wands.

My dad’s a magician. His dad was a magician. His dad’s dad was a magician. All the wives are magicians’ assistants (the field has never accepted women, because they are just lousy at tricks). When I was a child, items that I needed or cherished would regularly disappear—at breakfast, the shakers would vanish from my hand, and I wouldn’t find it until weeks later; I’d be showering and reach for the body soap and find myself covered in granules of California garlic salt. Another time I found my pet rabbit and closest friend Todd decapitated in a doctor’s bag after an act gone terribly wrong.


Thanks to my wacky family, I’ve grown up severely doubting that anything is actually real. I don’t respect other people because they could be ghosts, or holograms, or my dad in a mask. I don’t respect the concept of laws because there are no rules in magic except for never tell how you do your stunts.

As a believer in no government, I’m voting this year for a tee shirt that I found in a garbage can, because there was probably a person in this tee shirt at one time (maybe one who was disappeared), who, in my imagination, believes in all the things I believe in. Like that school should be free (I don’t freaking care how), and that trees have feelings, and that Russia is fiction that my mother made up to make me stop screaming. Also, isn’t it so funny to take an hour off of work (I don’t have a job) to go fill out a form just for shits?


Some people (that I have invented to stave off untenable loneliness) have told me, “Why would you vote for an old tee shirt when there is no way the old tee shirt will win?” or “Why not vote for that man-sized pile of used glue traps, or a real politician who is actually running for president?” These people are just jerks, and to them I respond, “I don’t know who wore this old tee shirt, so I won’t be sad should they are ever sawed in half by my unforgiving father.” And they say, “What if I told you that tee shirt belonged to serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy?” And I say, “Isn’t Hillary Clinton a serial drone killer and Donald Trump a rapist?” And they say, “Well, not exactly—” and I’ll say, “Yes,” and they’ll say, “Don’t you care about this country,” and I’ll close my eyes and say a malevolent spell and when I open them they are gone, but I don’t care where they went.

I am a physical ten-year-old but spiritual 190-year-old first-time voter in the swing state of Ohio, which means that my vote could probably do something if you believe that anything does anything. But I won’t, because I fundamentally doubt that government exists and isn’t a myth my parents invented to make me obedient. I’m Joanna, I sleep in a coffin and my cat is a ghost, and my mind is made up.