Roots of the Earth

I'm working--really, I am--but I'm also at home, and I'm also on Facebook, which complicates matters. My aunt and I--who have several recent shared experiences, included among them a love-hate relationship with Vacation Bible School programming, found ourselves in an instant-messaging conversation about politics as parabled at the middle-school lunch counter.

You may recall that school lunches are allocated through the use of punch card technology, which--as recent elections have shown--is not always particularly reliable. So we imagined a scenario in which children stood in line for hours, waiting for their food, while a bipartisan committee reviewed their punch cards to determine whether they had requested green beans or tater tots. As any reasonable person might imagine, most of the kids wanted tater tots, but what they were given was an eight-year supply of green beans.

All this led to the following collaborative poem, which we've titled "Roots of the Earth."

I would not have to be hungry
To eat a whole tray of tater tots.
I would simply have to be.
And in that being, I would greatly increase
Till all the earth were awash in ketchup
And all the world’s tired, its poor, its huddled masses,
Would gather at the great coastline of my monocultured feast
With spork in hand and napkin in collar
And we would all smile at one another
through our carbohydrated sweat
And wonder aloud, “Is there more to life than this?”
To which, if we were lucky,
the universe would respond,
“Stand by for dessert.”

I invite your literary critique. In other news, I've added videos from a recent book signing/reading event to my sidebar. I've been told they're reasonably funny. Hope you like them; feel free to share them.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes--Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah

Before I begin my rant, let me first acknowledge two things:

1. The opinions expressed on this blog are wholly my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer, my family, my publisher or any other binding relationship I find myself in.

2. I know next to nothing about anything when it comes to politics.

That being said, I'm getting really, really tired of the bald-faced claims of some of the candidates to be the "candidate of change." I'm thinking of one such candidate in particular, whose unusual name I won't mention. You'll probably figure it out pretty quickly. The thing that bugs me about this change-agent campaign is how frustratingly naked the opportunism is that's driving it. "Change" became the buzzword coming out of Iowa, and suddenly "change" is the middle name of this oddly named candidate.

Let me quickly add that "change" itself is a pretty vague concept. Do we want any kind of change whatsoever? Would the sinking of either coast into either ocean be good merely because it changes the landscape of the country? Similarly, is there nothing whatsoever that we may want to hold onto in even the slightest detail? Is the public school system inherently flawed simply because it will have existed prior to this particular candidate's taking office? Change, change change--blah, blah, blah.

So I reject the premise of superficial change as a legitimate campaign platform. But even if I were to grant the notion that what Washington needs is change, I wouldn't grant that this particular candidate is the obvious choice. Consider, for example, the current president, whose policies and perspective are among the issues demanding change:

He's the former governor of a state whose legislature was dominated by a different political party.

He's a former, relatively successful businessman.

He's a principled man of faith.

He's a "uniter, not a divider."

He had nebulous foreign policy experience when he announced his campaign for president.

He has a family pedigree in various levels of government.

He has a thing for Ronald Reagan.

Not much distinguishes the current president from this current candidate beyond the oddness of this particular candidate's name. So is it reasonable to anticipate change from such a near-doppelganger of the status quo?

All right. I'm done. Please note that I never named a candidate and that I explicitly distanced myself from all my binding relationships in this stating of my hopelessly naive political opinion. Someone, now, please change the subject.

Deck the Halls with Faux Endorsements

I wouldn't presume at this point in the presidential campaign to know for certain who I think would be best to lead our country for the next four years. But I've been seeing so much of these people on the news lately that it seems to be high time that I take what little I know of the candidates and make a preliminary endorsement for Barack Obama. {I'm still working on my endorsement for the Republican party.)

As you'll see below, this is about as uninformed an endorsement as one can manage, and really I must confess my reason for endorsing Barack, beyond his general appeal both as a champion of fresh thinking in Washington and as a candidate who recalls for me the idealistic innocence of early 1960s political activism: I have an idea for a theme song for him, and I hope by endorsing his candidacy I can convince him to run with my theme song.

Every candidate since 1992, when Bill Clinton wouldn't shut up about "thinking about tomorrow," has needed a theme song, whether they knew it or not. In some cases they've needed a whole theme mix-tape; one could argue that President Bush's i-Pod has been exposed to greater scrutiny than his department of defense. Hillary Clinton made a big deal out of her choice of theme song earlier this year, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was. That's OK, though, because the i-Pod has changed how we think about music. In the era of shuffle, a candidate needs to keep people guessing about what song best characterizes his or her campaign. It needs to be creative, poignant, memorizable and yet forgettable.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I offer Senator Obama in his quest for the White House: an eminently forgettable yet easily memorizable song for the moment, to keep everyone's thoughts on him even as we prepare our hearts for Christmas. You'll sing this song to the tune of "The Little Drummer Boy." I hope it enhances your holiday experience even as it makes you more politically conscious.

"Come," they told me (Barack Obama)
"Our future president" (Barack Obama)
As tall as the Sears Tower (Barack Obama)
He wants to fight the power (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Shall I vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs?

His professorial tone (Barack Obama)
His sixties retro suits (Barack Obama)
From Oprah feeling love (Barack Obama)
He towers all above (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Shall we vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs?

Sure, he's far too young (Barack Obama)
And dangerously thin (Barack Obama)
A junior senator (Barack Obama)
Campaigned when he was four (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Still, I'd vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs.

His veiled comparisons (Barack Obama)
To Martin Luther King (Barack Obama)
He's more like JFK (Barack Obama)
With fewer sandwiches (Barack Obama, 'rack Obama, 'rack Obama)
Sure, I'll vote for him (Barack Obama) when he runs.

PS: I'm still undecided as far as the Republicans go, but here's where I'm leaning:

Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee Ole!
Oh what fun it is to say the president's last name--Hey!