Pull the Plug Now: It's Campaign Time!
I have been pondering the world again, and that, as parallel-universe Martha Stewart might say, “is not a good thing.” (Also, she wouldn’t be a convicted criminal Mastermind.) Be that as it may, my pondering this AM focused, for some odd reason, on probability. Yeah, I know: Huh?
See, here’s the thing: I have a fan that I take with me from room to room. You’re probably thinking that it must be very spiffy indeed, this fan, that I evidently do not wish to let it out of my sight even for a short while, lest I cry from loneliness, soon becoming jealous of the dog—because, now that I think about it, the fan? It’s been spending entirely too much time blowing cool breezes across that ungrateful mutt’s indelicately bared belly—leading eventually to the awful probability that I will find myself—at two-thirty in the morning, half-asleep yet cackling, like a deranged Vincent Price character, with undeniable evil—mixing up a heaping helping of the cold kibble of revenge.
(Ed. Note: Before we get a zillion e-mails (yeah, like that's gonna happen), Iggy would never ever hurt an animal. Well, except Barney, but who wouldn’t? It’s a joke, for God’s sakes and he’s trying—we sincerely hope so, anyway—to make a point.)
See? There’s that probability angle, and it really isn’t good, leading as it does to harm coming to a perfectly good, if almost completely stupid, Labrador.
(Ed Note: Whew.)
Well there's that, and plus I never seem to get the fan plugged in the right way the first time. It’s very weird. There are exactly two ways to plug in the damn fan: Right and Wrong. Probability, you see (at least as I remember it from my college days, back when slide rules were still cool…okay, that was a lie, but we did know how to use them), sez that I will—through random chance, mind you—plug the infernal thing in correctly on the first try half the time. This is a lie. As I say, I never get it right the first time. It’s a lot like being a perpetual virgin, lots of “damns” followed by “oops” and “I’ll go get you a towel.”
Then it occurred to me that the fan is a metaphor. This metaphor business has been a reliable standby of mine ever since I saw that episode of “Dharma and Greg” in which Edward explains to Larry that the Coyote/Road-Runner cartoons are a metaphor, to wit, “you always want what you can’t have.” Which, apart from explaining why the coyote could get all that cool stuff from the criminally liable ACME Corporation but couldn’t find a freaking KFC or something, is really not the point.
The point (there is one now) is that I, in this fan scenario, am the American voting public; the plug is the electoral process; the electricity that flows through that plug is lobbyists; and the fan itself, the interior of which has built up quite a layer of miscellaneous grime, is of course any politician you care to name.
The beauty of this metaphor is this: I never get it right the first time, but in the end it just doesn’t matter. Eventually, the fan gets switched on and the end result is always the same: A little puff of dust and household dirt followed by endless streams of air.
This leads me (you really don’t want to know how) to think that the reason so many of our elected officials turn to the Dark Side is genetic: They are biologically determined, well before birth, to be inherently dirty machines whose only purpose is to create wind and white noise.
Which, if you ask me, is the most probable (is that a segue or what?) explanation for the so-called “Ethics” legislation that congress feels compelled to pass every two years, their never-ending and much-ballyhooed non-binding resolutions on cretin political causes célébres, and of course Ted Kennedy, Tom Delay, everybody who’s ever met that nice Abramoff fella and so interminably on. It also rather neatly explains “political commentators” Pam Coulter and James Carville, both of whom leave one wondering about the infallibility of a supreme being.
Sometimes, though, when the weather is nice and the breeze is light and airy and free of household dirt, I like to just open the windows and enjoy the day.
All I have to do is pull the plug.
(Ed. Note: The opinions stated herein are solely Iggy’s; we have nothing to do with them and have in fact been urging him to seek serious therapy for some years now. That said, we feel obliged to mention that his next post, which—according to this angry-sounding and rather rambling email we just got—will “flow as naturally as [poop] in the Ganges” and be about his candidacy for President in 2008, a campaign he notes, that “will follow in the distinguished footsteps of Pat Paulsen and that funny little [defiler of motherhood] with the big [expletive] ears….” Be afraid, be very afraid.)
See, here’s the thing: I have a fan that I take with me from room to room. You’re probably thinking that it must be very spiffy indeed, this fan, that I evidently do not wish to let it out of my sight even for a short while, lest I cry from loneliness, soon becoming jealous of the dog—because, now that I think about it, the fan? It’s been spending entirely too much time blowing cool breezes across that ungrateful mutt’s indelicately bared belly—leading eventually to the awful probability that I will find myself—at two-thirty in the morning, half-asleep yet cackling, like a deranged Vincent Price character, with undeniable evil—mixing up a heaping helping of the cold kibble of revenge.
(Ed. Note: Before we get a zillion e-mails (yeah, like that's gonna happen), Iggy would never ever hurt an animal. Well, except Barney, but who wouldn’t? It’s a joke, for God’s sakes and he’s trying—we sincerely hope so, anyway—to make a point.)
See? There’s that probability angle, and it really isn’t good, leading as it does to harm coming to a perfectly good, if almost completely stupid, Labrador.
(Ed Note: Whew.)
Well there's that, and plus I never seem to get the fan plugged in the right way the first time. It’s very weird. There are exactly two ways to plug in the damn fan: Right and Wrong. Probability, you see (at least as I remember it from my college days, back when slide rules were still cool…okay, that was a lie, but we did know how to use them), sez that I will—through random chance, mind you—plug the infernal thing in correctly on the first try half the time. This is a lie. As I say, I never get it right the first time. It’s a lot like being a perpetual virgin, lots of “damns” followed by “oops” and “I’ll go get you a towel.”
Then it occurred to me that the fan is a metaphor. This metaphor business has been a reliable standby of mine ever since I saw that episode of “Dharma and Greg” in which Edward explains to Larry that the Coyote/Road-Runner cartoons are a metaphor, to wit, “you always want what you can’t have.” Which, apart from explaining why the coyote could get all that cool stuff from the criminally liable ACME Corporation but couldn’t find a freaking KFC or something, is really not the point.
The point (there is one now) is that I, in this fan scenario, am the American voting public; the plug is the electoral process; the electricity that flows through that plug is lobbyists; and the fan itself, the interior of which has built up quite a layer of miscellaneous grime, is of course any politician you care to name.
The beauty of this metaphor is this: I never get it right the first time, but in the end it just doesn’t matter. Eventually, the fan gets switched on and the end result is always the same: A little puff of dust and household dirt followed by endless streams of air.
This leads me (you really don’t want to know how) to think that the reason so many of our elected officials turn to the Dark Side is genetic: They are biologically determined, well before birth, to be inherently dirty machines whose only purpose is to create wind and white noise.
Which, if you ask me, is the most probable (is that a segue or what?) explanation for the so-called “Ethics” legislation that congress feels compelled to pass every two years, their never-ending and much-ballyhooed non-binding resolutions on cretin political causes célébres, and of course Ted Kennedy, Tom Delay, everybody who’s ever met that nice Abramoff fella and so interminably on. It also rather neatly explains “political commentators” Pam Coulter and James Carville, both of whom leave one wondering about the infallibility of a supreme being.
Sometimes, though, when the weather is nice and the breeze is light and airy and free of household dirt, I like to just open the windows and enjoy the day.
All I have to do is pull the plug.
(Ed. Note: The opinions stated herein are solely Iggy’s; we have nothing to do with them and have in fact been urging him to seek serious therapy for some years now. That said, we feel obliged to mention that his next post, which—according to this angry-sounding and rather rambling email we just got—will “flow as naturally as [poop] in the Ganges” and be about his candidacy for President in 2008, a campaign he notes, that “will follow in the distinguished footsteps of Pat Paulsen and that funny little [defiler of motherhood] with the big [expletive] ears….” Be afraid, be very afraid.)
posted by Ignatius at 5:56 AM
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