Like a bad penny

I borrowed the first season of The West Wing from my friends. In the first three episodes, Jed the fictional president articulates a sane stance on abortion and politics and reacts to terrorists shooting down an American aircraft in a reasonable way (well, by the end of it he steps down to hitting a few military bases instead of bombing a whole country). And I’m thinking, where the H#^& are the politicians keeping the rational folks and why can’t we get them in office? Only on television are we going to get sane people in office.

In other news, I baked a cake, ruined my pasta/broccoli lunch by burning it to a crispy little wafer in the bottom of the pan, discovered that Longs does not sell ironing boards, and that there are now phones of the cordless persuasion that you can download ringtones and whatnot to, so when you’re running through the house tripping over the cat to get the phone you can do it to “Oops I did it again” or perhaps “Ricky don’t lose that number” or that old pop song that features some heartbroken guy singing about the telephone line needing to give him some time, as he’s listening to the girl not picking up the phone.

Also, I went nowhere and did nothing for Thanksgiving. Not even the movies. The line was hideously long for two days straight. And because I could not see the latest iteration of Bond, James Bond, I tried to watch Enterprise again yesterday. About the point where Archer tantrums about the aliens not giving them some part (carburetor? injector?) for the ship, only to find out that the aliens are offended because he let his dumb dog pee on one of their sacred trees, even though he knew from the start that 1. dogs are not people and do not have good manners, and 2. these people are easily offended, and 3. it is totally stupid dimwitted and idiotic to take less than well mannered crew along, let alone a dumb beagle who shouldn’t be on the ship in the first place — and then! and theeeeeen, he tantrums some more because the dog got SICK! on the mission he shouldn’t have been on in the first place! Talk about logical consequences!

Yet still, Archer does not learn. I waited long enough to see that the explanation wasn’t that Archer got stuck in a transporter accident that turned his brain into that of a four year old, which still wouldn’t have been much of an excuse considering the crew of the 1701-D were actual children (after their transporter accident) and managed to act more like adults than this clod, and then I put in Constantine, hoping that Keanu Reeves and His Wooden Acting Skills would amuse me more. And they did. Probably because I have no expectations of Keanu, and I do seem to have lingering expectations of the actor formerly known as Sam Beckett, who I actually liked.

So now I want two bumper stickers: “Jed Bartlett for President”, and “Fire Archer! Bring Back the Shat!” And something tells me it’s already been done.

And now, on to “Blake’s 7.” If I’ve got to go back in time to get watchable sci fi, so be it.