Sunday, June 22, 2008

Delusions of grandeur

Some days ago, out of the blue, Packrat mentioned something about the US drilling for oil in Alaska. I blinked and looked at him, asking him whether this was something that had just been announced. He said yes. So, why had I already heard about it? Was I clairvoyant or something? How did I know that, not only did the US want to drill for oil in Alaska, it made no sense because the oil under there wasn't enough to sustain the US for all that long and environmentalists and anyone who had 2 bits of a brain knew that it wasn't worth tearing up thousands of years of flora and fauna and wrecking the environment just for that little bit of oil.

Slowly, the pieces fell into place. I had seen all this on the Live Debate in The West Wing. We took a long sabbatical from watching TWW. The seasons between Aaron Sorkin leaving the show and this last season of the series were a bit painful to watch. But we recently picked it up and ventured into the 7th season which basically revolves around the Presidential Election. Problem is there's a real election going on as well so some of the time, I forget which is which and because TWW is written by people that have dreams of an ideal presidency and government, the issues are real and heartfelt. This isn't the first time it happened. When 9/11 happened, we were watching TWW when the ticker tape started whizzing across the bottom of the screen and the next day I remembered wondering whether it had anything to do with the coup in Haiti which was what we were watching. I have also been asked by students doing work on human rights abuses and violence against women whether Qumar where they executed women for adultery was a real place.

So, we try and watch it when time and space and kids permit. And surprisingly enough or not so surprising, we're actually more fired up by the campaign we're seeing on screen then the one we read about in the paper and watch on CNN. We're down to the last 5 days of the campaign and it's shot in a way that makes me feel stressed and tired just watching the candidates. Now that's good tv. But it's also beside the point. While watching Jimmy Smits play Matt Santos attempt to work 5 states in a day on 6 hours of sleep in the past 3 days, I wondered out loud who could possibly do such a job. We came to the conclusion that Packrat couldn't. As is, functioning on anything less than 8 hours of sleep is difficult for him. He however, thought I could because I work well under pressure though he didn't know if I could last an entire presidency.

Who knows? I have taken enough career/personality tests to know that as long as the job interests me and fires me up, I'm pretty much the energizer bunny. Give me something that kills the brain, it'll kill me too. So could I be president? Would I want to be president? I'd probably like the trappings of it but will probably want to slap the political leaders of nations that don't listen to what I say. Talk about Superpower status...All the delusions that I ponder the day before I go back to the grind.

If only I could remain in all these delusions...

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 10:39

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