April 2008


Boredom sucks.

There, I said it. (And so eloquently, too) Boredom makes every minute seem like an hour, every day seem like a week. Thomas Szasz once said, “Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.” That’s where I am right now; every moment I spend at work waiting for something to do is a total waste of time. I could be doing something worthwhile, but instead, I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting and doing…NOTHING.

Frankly, I doFrom: http://vaishno.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/boredom.jpgn’t see how lazy people do it. We all know the types who avoid work like the plague, even when it means sitting at their desks staring into space. How can they stand that? I swear I’d slit my wrists!

I’m the kind of person who wants to be busy all the time at work, and if I’m busy with more than one thing, even better. When I’m busy, the day flies by, I’m happier, and I’m more apt to be on top of my game. When I’m bored, the day drags, I’m a drag, and all I want to do is leave and do something productive.

For me, there are two distinct types of boredom. One involves a job where there is often nothing to do. The other involves a job with plenty to do, but the work doesn’t require creativity or strategic thinking. In my current situation, I have both. I’m bored without the work and I’m bored with the work.

Frankly, I can’t think of anything worse.

I look back to the job I had that was my favorite - CommunFrom: http://www.psidea.org/images/BangHeadHere.gifications Manager at America Online - and it’s easy to see why I loved it so much. I was busy all the time, things were constantly changing, my mind was creative and my thinking strategic. As busy as I was, I didn’t mind working extra hours, because it was more like play than it was work.

Contrast that to my current situation where I spend long periods idle, nothing changes and I’m never tasked to be creative or strategic. No wonder I want to run screaming from the building at 4:55pm every day.

I need some serenity. For the love of God, someone put me to work on something that matters!

This year’s presidential election is going to be interesting.

We’ve had eight years of Bush, and Americans are generally fed up with the record federal deficit, our lost of esteem among our allies and enemies alike, the war in Afghanastan and Iraq, our floundering economy and the loss of personal liberties for our citizens. As a result, we’ve created a situation where our only choices for our next president are three people whose political leanings range from middle-of-the-road left to way, way left. Our only opportunity to vote for someone with more conservative leanings can only come from independant candidates who have yet to declare their candidacies and probably won’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to get elected.

So, here we are.

Our choices are:

  • Barack Obama, a man with highly advanced rhetorical skills and a tongue of gold, who has somehow made the sheep among us forget that he is the most liberal senator in the US Senate today with a spiritual leader of over 20 years who spouts anti-American, racist rhetoric from the pulpit and makes no apologies for it. Obama’s record in the senate puts him in the 92 percentile for liberal voting, and he believes he can hold hands with terrorists and sing Kumbaya, and all our problems will be solved.
  • Hillary Clinton, who is the 16th most liberal senator in the US Senate, has been caught fabricating stories to boost her claims of experience and has been personally involved in some serious criminal scandals that run back many years.(Do Whitewater resort scam and cattle futures ring a bell?) She is the only First Lady to have ever been criminally investigated and, in the course of being investigated, told Congress she didn’t remember or didn’t know the answer to their questions 250 times. Now, there’s an honest woman.
  • John McCain, while a Republican, is far from conservative. He has labeled Christian leaders as “agents of intolerance,” he supports gay marriage, and is pro-choice when it comes to abortion. In addition, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act is one of the most left-wing acts of Congress in the past 20 years. Finally, McCain’s stance concerning immigration issues is farther left than many liberals.

What does this all mean for the voting public? It means that there will, without a doubt, be political change in the White House. For left-wingers, it means that, no matter which candidate gets their vote, they will have a liberal for a President — a good thing for them. For right-wingers, it means voting for the lesser of two evils. For middle-of-the-roaders, it provides an opportuntity to study up and vote for the man or woman whose political leanings are most like our own. (This is, of course, the same opportunity that the left-wingers and right-wingers have. In most cases, though, these voters will vote the party line no matter what, so it’s the middle-of-the-roaders who will be left with the hard decision.)

No matter what happens, this will be a historic election. Obama would be our first black president, Clinton would be our first female president and McCain would be the oldest person ever elected president.

Truth be told, I’m not sure who I’ll vote for. When faced with an ultra-liberal who might or might not have a racist agenda, a strong liberal who has been caught up in several political scandals and who has told a number of lies and a liberal in conservative clothing with an anger management problem and diminishing brain power, I don’t see a very good choice.

At this point, my only hope is a strong independant candidate. I’d vote for Frank Keating or Colon Powell if they were to run. (Sadly, neither will.) Keating was a great governor who handled the Murrah Building bombing and the crisis situation that followed with diplomacy and made Oklahoma look good in the process. Colon Powell is an equally brilliant man with a track record of success throughout all facets of his life. Both are men of great character.

That said, if all we have to choose from is Obama or Clinton and McCain, I think McCain will win. He’ll get the conservative vote by default as the only Republican; he’ll most certainly get the military vote, and he’ll probably get most of the middle-of-the-road vote.

Whoever we get, the face of this country is bound to change. I hope that when the dust settles, we’re in a better spot than we are today, both on the domestic and the international front. It certainly can’t get worse.

Or can it?