If I ruled the World

I have never managed to keep a New Year's Resolution so maybe its the time of year that's the problem and not my lack of initiative. Yeah, that's it.

I've decided to change the concept of this blog. I bet all of you out there reading this didn't even know I had a concept to begin with. Never mind, I have one now.  The new concept is: If I ruled the world.  

First blog of the new concept: How to Elect a President

After a ten thousand years of watching political ads on TV, fighting with my neighbors over if I'm going to go to hell if I put a bumper sticker on my car for a candidate they don't approve of, and trying to figure out if it really matters who I vote for..... I've come up with some ideas on how to improve the process.

First of all, there is something morally wrong with multi-billionaires getting their minions to call people on fixed incomes to ask them to send money for their campaign. Yes, I know we have all these stupid rules so anyone can run for office, not just the rich. Well look how well THAT worked.  

Instead of using donated money to transport candidates, printing bumperstickers and outragiously rude TV commercials... what if the candidates had to use that money to actually improve the country in some way. We could see how creative they can be with money. We can see where their priorities are concerning the needs of the people. We could see their problem solving abilities in action.

What if a candidate actually had to do the things they promise in their campaign! We vote for these guys and they get in office, they might even put their ideas into a bill before congress and then it gets voted down and that's the end.  I remember a book about a utopian community I read in high school where someone said that voting is just a way for politicians to pass the blame.

What if TV spots for candidates could only be the same format? No fancy expensive ads and definately no bad mouthing each other. Everytime a candidate says something bad about his opponent he should have to put a quarter in a jar.  We could get the country out of debt in one election. Everytime the media focuses on something stupid like whether the color of a candidate's hair indicates that they belong to a secret society, the media should have to put a thousand dollars into the jar.  That money could go to the offending candidate's campaign.

Ads on TV could be like station identification. They could be aired at the top of the hour and each could only be fifteen seconds.  It could be like a debate where they each have to respond to a topic and when one is aired, the opponent's would have to be aired right after. The order that they are shown would switch every other time.

The campaign should start on January 1st of the year of the election. Maybe the primaries could all be held at the same time like the general election.

After we do all those things, I'll think of some more. I'm done fixing the elections for now. Next time I'll figure out how to create world peace.

Commercials

This is one of my favorite topics. I just watched a commercial for Rozerem which is a sleep drug. It's the one where the guy gets up and talks to the beaver and Abraham Lincoln.  Of course, they always list all the possible side effects.  But I got to say, that maybe one of the reasons that people are having trouble sleeping is because they are 'driving or using big equipment' when they should be sleeping. The warnings say you shouldn't do that until you know how the drug effects you. Shouldn't it effect you by putting you to sleep? Maybe it's just me but I don't want people driving around on sleeping pills.

One of the other side effects of these drugs is drowsiness. I wouldn't call this a side effect, I would 
call this tthe desired effect. I just don't get it sometimes.  

TV Talk

I'm all award showed out tonight. I watched the British ones on BBC America. It was interesting.
I thought Ricky Gervais was funny as usual. But it was your typical award show. 

Then I watched the Grammy's which always has potential IMO. I remember when Huey Lewis and
the News opened the show and basically brought down the house. I think that was the same year 
that Amy Grant performed her Angels Watching Over Me song. Neither of these people are my 
favorites but there is something about seeing someone when they are 'ON'. Was it last year when
Melissa Etheridge came out with her bald head after chemo and absolutely stopped the show. 
That performance goes in the record books. (don't know which record book but if there is one, she
should be in it).  There are more, I know. Tonight? Not so much. Maybe it was just me and my tastes but I wasn't moved by much. I was glad to see Dixie Chicks get the awards but was it because they really were the best album or was this politics? Politics that I believe in, btw. I think what happened to them and the threats they had to endure was beyond believable. So I don't know.  

The thing about award shows for me is that they always remind me that I'm not doing what I always dreamed about. I dreamed about all sorts of things and I'm not doing any of them. I used to act in high school and college. I'm not doing that. I write but I'm not creating what I want to create. So watching those shows are either good for me or just depressing.  Of course, I'm writing this. I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't watched it tonight.

Becoming who I am by looking at who I was

It's hard to know where to begin when I tell stories about myself. I can always see where things happened because something before it happened. If you keep looking, you can go all the way back to birth and let's face it, no one wants to hear the story from that far back. However there are some things that happened way earlier that were pointers that pushed me in certain directions. I didn't know it at the time of course.

When I was eighteen, I was in a very bad car accident. I spent nearly seven months in the hospital. There isn't a lot to do when you're stuck flat on your back that long so I listened to a lot of music. I was always the type of person that had music in her life. Certain songs seemed to speak to me. Even when I was little, I thought it would be so cool if real life had a soundtrack. I loved the Beatles like most teenagers my age. But I became a fan of Billy J. Kramer because he wasn't as well known here as the Beatles as if that gave me a better chance of meeting him. It didn't seem so stupid back then.  
I have managed to keep my preference for the lesser known artists but I don't think 
its for the same reason

While I was in the hospital, The Moody Blues released the song, "Question." There was a verse  that went:

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
and if you can see
what it's done to me,
To lose the love I knew could safely lead me through 

I cried every time I heard it but it got me through those long months. It became my mantra. I was looking for someone to change my life and I was looking for a miracle. Even though I knew that they weren't singing about a girl in a hospital, it didn't matter. That's when I learned that some songs can actually transcend themselves.  Great lyrics don't really belong to the composer once they are let loose to the world. 

(a less poignant example is also a Moody Blues song. No matter how many times I read the 
lyrics I still think of Monty Pythonish 'Knights in White Satin' when I hear that song. )

Many years later I was fortunate to see the Moody Blues in concert at George, Washington. The venue is a natural amphitheater on the Columbia gorge miles in the high desert. When they sang 'Question' under that clear, cold, dark sky, well it took my breath away. Needless to say I was in tears.

Welcome to the good ol days

 Welcome to the world of blog.  Some how I let this institution get ahead of me. I've been a computer person for years... way before the Internet became public. Back when modems were 10 bauds and so slow you could read your email as it downloaded, go get a cup of coffee and read the next email before it was finished. I had to walk five miles in the snow to get to my computer each day and I had to format a disk before I could use it. Ahh, the good old days.

I remember Wordstar and Lotus and MS Dos.  To boot the computer, I had to make sure the boot disk was inserted into the A drive because it didn't have a hard drive.  A CD-ROM could hold more information than you'd ever use in a lifetime.  

So now I'm writing a blog and some day I'll learn to do a podcast.