The upside of having a life outside of the internet is being able to get away from the drama. The downside, of course, is missing out on all the juicy events. Sometimes I feel like Yuri Orlov from "Lord of War:" always coming in just as something ends, or leaving just as something begins.
Anywho, everything that's been going on here lately has got me kinda bummed. Not sure about the rest of you guys, but I need a recharge every now and then. And on top of that, a reminder: that these elected officials care about one thing above all else. And that's elections.
Allow me to tell you a story (cue wavy screen of flashback sequence...)
So I'm sitting here, thinking about a crazy past coupla days and saying to myself "Self, I need inspiration. Something to keep me going. Something to help me understand why things are happening the way they are." Whenever I get like this, I turn to a tried and true friend.
My Congressperson? No.
Drugs or alcohol? Um, nope.
Political writings of our fore-fathers? Not in this case.
No, what I go to is my movie collection. Books are cool, but you can't hear the thunder in a person's voice or see the passion in their eyes by reading. We've seen the effect of drugs and alcohol on our leaders. As for calling Congress, I can't imagine there will ever be a day where I'll get a response that I would describe as inspirational, which is why we have to (sadly) wait for elections to get any kind of emotion from half of these yahoos.
So I go to my "inspirational section" and check out the usual suspects (which ironically, includes "The Usual Suspects"). There's "Tombstone," "Gladiator" and "The Patriot." There's "Star Wars," "The Matrix" and "Star Trek: First Contact." There's "Lord of the Rings," "Transformers: The Movie" and "Labrynith."
Wait; something's missing.
I go to check my "once in a blue moon" section and it's not there.
Then it dawns on me: I never picked that flick up.
I jump on the tube and access every channel I have. I don't care if I have to watch a crappy edited version with commericals, I'm watching this movie and I'm catching this scene.
After minutes of searching and thoughts of doubt begin to creep into my brain, the cable gods answer my plea. I see it. The flick I was looking for. And my precious, precious scene:
For those who can't run it, let me just give you the good stuff:
America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free". I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.
Yeah, I know: "this is a fake speech by a fake character directed towards a fake power-hungry jerk." But every now and then, it helps to inspires me.
What inspires you?