Sunday, September 14, 2008

Only Slightly Disappointed

I just finished reading a book of poems. The poems in the book were not what I expected them to be. I suppose that if a Pottery Barn catalog were converted into a book of poems, the result would be something quite like the book of poems I just finished reading.

Friday, September 05, 2008

I have no idea

The following quote was written about a particular candidate in the upcoming presidential election. I am keeping the author and the candidate in question (if you really want to know, you could google a phrase) to illustrate the point that this comment could be said about any person and their support of any candidate, anywhere. We can only hope that, when the author of this comment read his own article in the paper the day after writing it, in a flash the irony struck him and he chuckled at himself.
This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.
It is cool that I get to determine the society I will live in based on the simple tell-all inclination of whether I want someone "just like me" to be president or not.

I think, if we were to take the author seriously the choices before all of us are:
1. Live a reprehensible life and wish for someone morally upstanding to take over my government for me because I am busy choosing to be despicable.
2. Live a morally upstanding life and wish for someone who is a moral turd to take over society simply so that I will not deserve the hell that I will thereafter live in.

Further suggestions from the floor are welcome.