Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

The Supreme Court had determined that because the current administration had basically collapsed, a special election would be held in 2017 to determine the next president. The corruption of the current administration had caused these drastic measures. It was time for society to rally around the Republic and get the country back in shape. A lot had happened in six months.

The plan was surprisingly simple. The designated six months would be divided into thirds. The first two months would allow those interested in running to campaign for the primaries. The primaries would be held, in near unison, at the beginning of August. Both conventions would be held the last week of August and the candidates from both parties would campaign in September and October, with the election being held on Election Day 2017. The president elected at that time would be sworn in the Friday after Thanksgiving and would serve an abbreviated term of three years. If this fast paced election cycle could be pulled off successfully, it would become a model for future presidential elections in the United States in an attempt to prevent media, monetary and foreign “sway”.

Because this election cycle was so abbreviated, I was asked to work for a campaign in the role of CIO. None of the campaigns had raised a lot of money in such a short amount of time, my chief role as CIO was to be assured that folks that brought their own laptops for campaign purposes had secure connections to the pertinent databases and the machines were deemed clean.

I had never met the candidate. She was well known and had run for president before. This was her last chance. It was like a golden ticket from nine Willy Wonkas dressed in the robes reserved for the judicial types.

I was busy doing my work when she walked into the room. She was wearing red pant suit, her demeanor was pleasant but very firm. She knew what she wanted to accomplish, she wasn’t going to let this last chance slip by without one last fight. She was tired but she was determined. 

I was looking down at a Linux box trying to figure out why it had a monochromatic CRT green screen when she spoke, “I hear you’re keeping my network secure and getting the information we need.”

I looked up quickly at a familiar face and stammered, “Madam Secretary… um, uh, I wasn’t expecting you to be here. It’s an honor, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Hillary. Is there anything I need to know?”

“Just one thing, ma’am. That it with all my hope and might that the American people get it right this time”, was my simple reply. Before she walked away, I said, “it’s an honor, Madam Secretary. If I may, any chance we can take a quick selfie?”

She smiled, put her arm around me and walked over as we stood close together and smiled at my iPhone.

As in all my dreams, the selfie never came out. I couldn’t see it.

And that’s when I woke up back to this reality. 

In a way it’s hard for me to believe that it’s only Tuesday. Outside of pilot stuff, I’ve scaled away from social media and news outlets, trying to find contentment in my own little world. However, once in a while I see what’s going on via Twitter or breaking news alerts on my phone and I’m just so dang confused about our part of the world.

A man fatally shot a teacher, one of her students and himself, while also injuring another child in the process in San Bernardino, California yesterday, but this act of gun violence doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention on social media. It’s like the American public has become desensitized to gun violence in schools in the day and age in our country. Such a sad state of affairs.

There’s a whole bunch of outrage about basically every wrong decision an airline can make when United Express forced “volunteers” off a flight from Chicago to Louisville to make room for United employees that needed to get to Louisville to work. There was screaming, chaos, resistance, police involvement, a passenger yanked out of his purchased seat, bonked against an armrest and then dragged down the aisle where he apparently, ten minutes later, gained access back to the aircraft, face covered in blood and wrapped himself around a post in the back of the airplane. He was removed again. I’m sick of this story, I’m sick of really stupid airlines and while I think United was completely in the wrong in this instance, the man should re-evaluate his ability to pick which battles to fight. I guess I place a lot of emphasis on personal dignity and self-respect.

Then there’s a bunch of outrage this evening because Trump Administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer said something really stupid about Hitler and the holocaust, basically reducing it to some sort of unfortunate incident in the 20th century history books and now he’s apologizing and clarifying and doing the usual spin and twist of any typical Trump Administration official.

No one seems to notice that whatever part of the timeline in the grand scheme of things that we are currently sitting on, this part of the timeline is completely on fire. 

Oh, and Trump is kind of picking fights with various other nuclear powers in the world, so I’ll be happy awaking each morning knowing that we weren’t wiped off the face of the planet by nukes in our sleep.

I’m getting to the point to where I really can’t keep up with the news anymore. I can’t keep up with the real news, I can’t keep up with the idiocy going on in Washington and I certainly can’t keep up with the mass Pearl Clutching in progress every day over some new topic in which to engage in faux outrage.

I feel just as confused as Dorothy when Sophia was made over to look like a 65-year old Drag Queen. I wish life was that simple again. I wish there was a laugh track.

I guess we just need to keep looking for the bright side.

I’m feeling a little philosophical today. My “steel trap” memory was definitely inherited from my father. He would remember a customer, and the exact contents of their last purchase, 10 years after their previous visit to the family building supplies and contracting business. He held the entire inventory of the store in his head. For every useless fact that I can recite (for example, only one sign on Interstate 81 has ever spelled “Bartel Rd” in Brewerton correctly and that was installed in 1984 and incorrectly replaced in 1992), I have many happy memories and memories that haunt and taunt me. Every jab or slur made at me in high school. Every time I made someone feel bad (intentionally or otherwise). The time an elementary teacher told me to just be myself and it’ll all figure itself out. My first crush (in 5th grade), being confused by it and then being devastated when he left the school.

In the 2004 long forgotten, short run, sci-fi television series “Century City”, there was an episode about a pill one could take to selectively erase their memories to improve their life today. Instead of letting it go, they just chemically erased it.

Would you erase your memories if you could selectively erase only the bad ones?

Despite the ‘garbage’ that lives in my steel trap, I wouldn’t be interested. I’m just shy of my life’s halfway point and I figure all of that ‘stuff’, good, bad or insignificant, makes me who I am today. It still haunts me once in a while but it’s part of my baggage. And sometimes that baggage just needs to be put in storage, not thrown away.