Mental Splinters - Rick Perry

I’ve decided I need to create a new section of the blog. 

I’m not the world’s most observant person, but even I notice things from time to time.  Once I notice something, it won’t stop bothering me.  It’s like getting a splinter in your finger that irritates the crap out of you, until you finally go dig the tweezers out of the drawer in the bathroom and pull it out.  For some reason, writing these annoying things down has always served as the tweezers to my mental splinters.  I write it down, and it’s gone, and I don’t have to think about it anymore.  What happens after that doesn’t matter; it could get lost, tossed out, ripped up, or thrown in the fireplace.  I just needed to get it out.  It’s such a nice feeling, once it’s out. 

Unfortunately for you, dear reader, now I have a blog, which means that many of these splinters are likely to be deposited right here.  From my perspective, it’s vastly preferable to physically writing them down, prone as I am both to cramps in my writing hand and paper cuts.  In fact, I’ve already left many of these mental splinters all over the place; they just haven’t necessarily been identified as such. 

So, I apologize to you in advance for any inconvenience these splinters may cause.  At a minimum, you are stuck with having to look at them, and I suppose it’s even possible that you may yourself pick one up if you’re not suitably cautious.

Mental Splinters – 11/9/11

For my first entry, I’m going to the world of politics.  With the run-up to the big election next year, I’m probably going to get a lot of these kinds of splinters…   

So Rick Perry had another rough go of it at the debate last night, and forgot which three federal departments he would eliminate if he were president. 

It seems pretty clear by now that Rick Perry’s formula for winning the Republican nomination is to be more like George W. Bush than George W. Bush was.  He’s bigger than Bush, he walks more like John Wayne than Bush, he has a twangier drawl than Bush, and he’s more macho than Bush.  He’s like Bush, if Bush were more like Chuck Norris.

The problem is that male Texas politicians seem to keep getting into these important national elections.  I think it’s because there’s no other outlet in their own state for these men to demonstrate their ultra-Texasness (Texanity?).  Ask yourself this question.  You don’t see former Texas governor Ann Richards running for national office, do you?  You know why?  She’s a girl, and there’s already a Miss Texas pageant.  What we need is a Mr. Texas pageant.  That way, all the good old boys can get together and focus on what is obviously most important to them:  being the biggest Texan.  Hopefully, that would alter more than a few career paths, and help improve the rest of the field, by bringing in candidates whose strongest qualification is something other than being from a particular state. 

If that’s not enough to deter them from running for high political office, well then, all we’ll have to do is pull out those photos from the evening dress competition.

So how about it?  Can we please have a moratorium on Texas politicians running for President, at least until there’s a Mr. Texas pageant?  We can even get Donald Trump to run it.  Can you imagine the combined mass of all that ego in one place? 

It might create the universe’s first “black egole.”