Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Unreal Expectations

I haven’t been watching or reading much news. I have been trying to avoid it. I’m going through a period of political pull back for a moment. It really won’t last long. I can’t help myself in the long run. Right now I am dealing with some family issues, a crazy busy but tenuous work situation, and trying to reorganize my days. I even finished up a fiction book that my son recommended. I wasn’t that impressed with the book, but I was impressed at the reading level of my 8 year old. Geesh. The book was Inkheart and will soon be a movie starring Brendan Frasier. I’m sure we’ll see it. It wasn’t much of a page turner for me and I kept seeing the villains as cartoon characters in my mind for some reason, but it did have a good, although predictable ending.

All of that has kept me out of the Obama glow. I’ve been getting spammed with emails about “Obama coins” and other assorted “memorabilia”. Sorry, it’s just a little nauseating. Not because I voted for the other guy, but because the expectation level that has been set is… well unrealistic at best. During the election Conservatives joked that Obama was perceived as ‘the messiah’.

We were just joking.

I really had no idea that a good chunk of the population was serious. Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece about the frenzy. My favorite quote has to be, “Being cool can really help a new president.”

The depth of the comment is beyond me. I’ll have to meditate on that one for a while.

5 comments:

kristen said...

Oh! Faith loved Inkheart!!! It was an all time fav for a long time! She saw it was coming out in movie form and was so excited!

She is reading this Garth Nix series,it starts with Mr. Monday, and goes through all the days of the week, anyways I tried to read it and just couldn't do it. And i can read about anything. But I got mike the books on cd from the library and he likes them. Not as much as Harry, but still likes them. But is anything as good as Harry?

K.

JonesGardenBlog said...

I haven't read Harry, as you can see from my list for this year, Inkheart was actually my first fiction book for the year.

I'm not a particularly fast reader (I definitely don't skim like some people :) and I don't have much time to read, so I find non-fiction books easier to stay plugged into. You also have the added benefit of learning something useful or historical.

I might try the books on CD thing. That could come in handy on my hour and a half of commuting each day. The drive home isn't bad because there are some good radio shows, but the morning is rough. Not much on at 4:30 in the morning. It's either music or the Wall Street Journal radio show. Ugh.

Anonymous said...

You're right, shame on Americans for setting high standards for their elected leadership. We should not be so audacious as to expect so much from them... haven't we learned ANYTHING?

JonesGardenBlog said...

Actually, I expect so much from our leaders, that I expect them to have actually DONE SOMETHING in their lives BEFORE getting elected. How CRAZY is that!

You crack me up, Nick.

kristen said...

Oh you have to read Harry!!! Get them on CD Mike said the narrator on Cd for Harry is masterful! Loved them so much.

 
Clicky Web Analytics