Thanks to Hurricane Tropical Depression Fay, the Nashville area finally got some much-needed rain over the past two days. Walking barefoot in the back yard was an exercise in pain (same dialogue: "Ouch ... ouch ... spider bite! ... ouch ... dog poop ... ouch") and the plants in the front looked like French supermodels. If, I guess, supermodels were planted in dirt and peed upon by passing animals.
Yeah, that didn't work, but "go big or go home" is the motto of this blog.
I'm sitting on the front porch, admiring my manly man accomplishment of the day: installing a dimmer on the light switch. Normally I would not admire such a thing, but once again the times, they are a-changin', at least when it comes to switch wiring, and I had to decipher the latest in switch wiring technology. Which I did -- by cutting the damn thing off the wires, and doing it the way God intended (which also happens to be the way I last remember it being). Now we're all good, and the bugs waiting to bite my legs and ankles have much better mood lighting with which to do it.
***
So after the two week orgy of Olympian feats (about which I am in total agreement with my good buddy Slev), we have yet another fourteen days of manic delusion, dashed hopes, broken rules, dictatorial overlords and stunning events properly staged for television.
At one time I was more of a political junkie. I cared passionately about which parties won elections; I remember getting into a huge debate with a fellow copy editor over the Contract With America, and the relative merits of listening to Rush Limbaugh. I'll still defend the latter; he's hugely entertaining. Nobody else on radio today can lay a glove on him. I suppose it helps that I am somewhat sympathetic with certain of his points of view; I'd listen to the liberal Rush Limbaugh, if such a creature existed. He's just amazingly good at what he does, and what he does is entertain.
It's not religion.
Oh, wait.
Uh ... never mind. (And no, the press isn't biased! That's just silly!)
Everyone has a religion in their lives; for some it's work. For others, it's sports, or drinking, or Oprah, or family, or pets -- something takes center stage in their lives. For the next fourteen days, we'll see the religion of politics take center stage. It's kind of sad, because I can think of few things that will lead to disillusion more quickly than putting your faith, hopes and dreams into politicians.
James Madison said, in Federalist 51:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
If men were angels. Or, as my old roommate, John D. Carroll, once told me ... I think it was the second time I met him ... "Yeah -- and if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle."
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