’08/12 Election
He May Be Leader In Waiting But Can Obama Get My Kitchen Done?
The US’ citizenry may be going to the polls in record numbers today and voting Obama (as well they should, when these are the people they’re up against), but I’m a bit lacking in election fever myself. because this is a fair summary of what’s happening at our house:
Nah, it’s not really – our builders don’t wear hats.
One builder is a South African misanthrope who’s an object lesson in how the colonial Dutch have taken all the worst Dutch qualities, like didacticism and bad manners, and amplified them. The other builder is a miniscule Glaswegian of indeterminate vintage who with his Russian girlfriend was expecting a baby 3 days ago, and who jumps like a scalded cat whenever his phone beeps.
Everything is covered in plaster dust, it’s cold, the water’s off, I’m holed up in the bedroom with an instant coffee because I tripped up over the cat and broke the glass in my cafetiere which is going to be a bugger to replace in Holland and the laundry is piling up and to get clean socks I may have to go and buy some.
But aren’t Bernard Cribbins and Lego absolutely made for each other?
On The Lam
Re-entry, to the sounds of rain and hammering… election, what election? Is something happening? Sod that, we’ve got a kitchen to build!
Sorry for the sudden drop in posting, but we had to unexpectedly decamp to (what were supposed to be) warmer climes as the builders moved in the boiler went out and the heating and hot water went off.
It was bad enough manoeuvring 2 wriggling catboxes and our bags and baggage on and off high-stepped, double-decker Dutch trains, if only I hadn’t only a day later then managed to let our Hector escape into the scary midnight wilds of Zeeland, not to be seen again for three days.
It never occurred to me that a three-legged cat would make it down several flights of vertiginous, typically Dutch stairs, bumpety bumpety bump, without going totally arse over tip and landing in a tangled heap at the bottom.
I was wrong.
The trouble is, all horribly howling cats look the same in the dark and what I’d thought it was the resident deaf cat doing her usual midnight howl with a bit more gusto than usual was actually a horribly intestinally clenched Hector, determined to do his business in the proper outside and none of your namby namby litter tray business; that’s for girls. Once in the big outside the tempting scent of many tiny, nervous mammals went straight to his head and it was no more Mister Sleek City Cat, hello Hector, King of The Mighty Jungle!
So much for the brief, relaxing break we’d hoped for – instead, we got three days tramping the hedgerows and back gardens of a small market town in the south Netherlands, getting drenched and chilled through to the bone, looking for a cat who was having a very nice time thank you playing the mighty hunter, and who didn’t want to be found at all but only to miaow pathetically now and then from some inaccesssible spot so that we wouldn’t know how much fun he was having.
Glad he did. We had no fun at all. [Point of order: may I also note at this point that it really is bad manners and somewhat insensitive to continually complain like a fretful child (although you are 28) to someone who has a terminal illness, that you have one tiny degree of temperature and a bit of a sore throat?]
Nevertheless, chilled to the bone, exhausted and irritated beyond endurance as I have been, it’s as good a way as any to spend the run up to a presidential election. Better than listening to overpaid and overexposed pundits getting increasingly, nonsensically hysterical.
I should be thankful that at least I’ve been mostly spared the BBC’s Justin Webb, who’s all over the airwaves this morning desperately fighting to have McCain taken seriously, as if he can win now in any other way except by poll interference, a rearguard legal action a la Florida 2000 or the sudden appearance of a barking mad ‘lone wolf’ with a rifle.
You can hear the Republican talking points for the day echoed in Webb’s reports, just as loudly as he must be hearing the echoes of his career as Washington’s foremost British media suckup going down the tubes the closer that Obama’s election gets.
Hmm, I wonder how much of Webb continuing to assure viewers that McCain can still win (despite all evidence to the contrary) we’ll get on tonight’s overnight BBC election coverage?
One thing’s certain, there’ll be no shortage of rubbish spoken by all concerned: even without Webb, the BBC’s election commentary’s has become even more asinine now Lewis Hamilton is the World Formula 1 champion.
Potted R4 Today programme: “Obama is the new Lewis Hamilton! Hamilton is the new Obama! Look, they’re both black! That means something doesn’t it? Not sure what, but we’ll say it anyway!”
Oh God, I just had a horrible thought: once the results are in, how long before Campaign 2012 starts and the speculation over Palin’s potential presidential candidacy begins? I give it less than 24 hours.
I can’t stand it. I think I’d rather go back to the rain and the wet.
Nice One
Campaign videos are not usually my thing as the voiceovers make me want to put a brick through the screen. I swear, there must be a school where they teach the narrators to sound like that gravel-voiced guy who did all the movie trailers. But this hits every political point without once being obnoxious or hyperbolic, while still tapping into the shared cultural experience of well, just about anybody who ever watched commercial television. Brilliant.
Comment of The Day
[Flickr image by Nashmj]
At Talking Points Memo, on McCain volunteer Ashley Todd and the Obama-mugger that never was:
I was coming out of Starbucks this afternoon when a big fat hillbilly ran over to me and knocked my half-caf soy latte out of my hand and said “You look like an Obama supporter, I’m going to teach you to support McCain”. Then he knocked me to the ground and pulled out a swiss army knife. “I’m going to carve an ‘M’ in your face, liberal,” he insisted, and then he paused,”How do you spell, ‘M'” , he asked. “Well, then, I’m going to make you squeal like a pig…”
Or, maybe I just dreamed this at my desk after lunch. I did doze off for a moment…it is SO HARD to tell dreams from reality, these days.
Posted by c4Logic in reply to a comment from TheraP
UPDATE
I see the National College Republicans, for whom Todd worked, have about as much human feeling a the rest of their kind. Despite the fact McCain and Cindy jumped at Todd’s story, expressing public sympathy all over the airwaves when they thought they could use her to bolster the campaign with the racist base, now that she’s been found out she’s become a non-person.
CRNC Statement on Ashley Todd
When Ms. Todd initially contacted us claiming to have been attacked our first reaction was obviously to be concerned for her safety. We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit, Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions.
We have terminated her effective today.