American Dreamz

I'm not a very political person. I don't partake in rallies. I don't "back" candidates. Even voting is a stretch for me sometimes. But one can't really help getting just the teeniest bit swept up in the U.S. pre-election hubbub. (Mmhmm. Hubbub.) Because that's all the Internet's talking about these days.

I don't read very many blogs. I wish I read more. One of the blogs I read is a misnamed e-newsletter, even. And the other is a bonafide blog called Dooce (thanks Mark H). This blog is so good you might consider abandoning me for it. If you did, I wouldn't blame you. I'd be sad alright, but I wouldn't blame you.

Both of my blog-like reading materials this week went rant-style on what's going on on the Republican side of the ticket. The rants are usually about how Sarah Palin is pro-life and that makes her scary or about how some families simply don't have the money to eat AND have health insurance. You know, little picky things.

And I have a feeling that if the two blogs I read are going ape-shit, the rest of the country's going ape-shit as well. A brief visit to Twitter put me face to face with four-hundred-thousand Sarah Palin jokes. That link I gave you to Dooce? Her rant post has over 2,000 comments. Almost 2,500 actually. (And she got a death threat, too.)

Our neighbours to the south are off the hook right now.

Meanwhile, Boyfriend has joined me here in lovely Canmore, bearing good news about the new Mac products that were announced this week. I don't care even a little, but he's a tech guy and gets rilly, rilly, rilly excited about these things. (He even subscribes to a newsfeed called Mac Rumours. For serious.)

And then he showed me a thingy called Fitbit, a wee paper-clip-lookin' unit that tracks your physical activity and sleep patterns. After that, Boyfriend and I spent a cozy moment on the couch browsing through iPhone applications. Because he'll probably make one next week and make a million dollars.

And I realized the only really good thing about America is the wide variety of consumer products a person can buy. That's the only, only plus. "Well yeah," Boyfriend said, using his iPod Touch as a remote and turning on some romantic music. "That's the American Dream. To sell people stuff."

And I am the most naive person in the entire world because I kinda thought that was just a myth. Like, really, we just say that's the American Dream, but the American Dream is really a country full of gloriously happy, healthy people and everyone knows low-priced consumer goods can't buy happiness, silly. Oh, and pssst. Don't worry, we'll pull ourselves out of the gaping jaws of self-destruction just in time for the closing credits.

I think the child inside me just died.