Politician Promotions: On Putting Yourself in a Positive Light

We're all well acquainted with the vast amounts of propaganda that surround political races, especially at this time of the year. The television and radio clips that seem to fall into two extreme categories: completely bashing an opponent or promoting one's self.

Choices that these candidates have made in the past are most definitely going to affect how they feel about certain issues. However, "judging a book by its cover" comes into play here and brings up the fact that you can't judge a person solely on their past actions or inactions. A commercial that spends 28 seconds claiming that candidate A doesn't support ______ and has worked hard to fight against ______ followed by two seconds of, "I'm candidate B and I support this message," does not make me want to vote for either of these candidates. First, it makes me want to research candidate A and look into what his or her past mistakes really were and what he or she is planning on doing differently now and in the future. Second, why would a commercial completely bashing candidate A and saying absolutely nothing about candidate B encourage me to vote for candidate B?

I have to give lots of credit to those candidates who choose to utilize their full 30 seconds by promoting themselves. By talking about their own mistakes and communicating how they plan to work on certain issues, they are putting themselves in a very high position. In my opinion, if you are a good enough candidate you should not have to put down everyone else in order to make yourself look good. You should be able to run on the appeal of your characteristics alone.

Please Whistle Elsewhere

So first, I must apologize yet again for my lack to follow through with my promise to be more consistent about writing on a regular basis, but this time there is good reason! (Perhaps this blog will turn into a long list of excuses...)

Due to my lack of internet... gasp... I have not been able to do my faithful duty of writing. I suppose that I could have made the 10 second walk to the "WiFi" area a little sooner, but I was quite busy, sprawling on a chair in the sun, forming tan lines and reading as much as I possibly could.

Onward to today's topic. While gaining internet access, signing into my e-mail and Facebook accounts and catching up on everything that I've chosen to avoid for the past week, I endured the most awful whistling. Starting out, it was not quite bad. However, after you hear a not-so-musical-man whistle the same 15 second portion of Seal's Kiss from a Rose, it starts to get just a little bit old.

After about a minute, I glanced up from my laptop to see just who was whistling to himself. He took no notice of my annoyance after a second glance another minute later. After three minutes, it was as if he was intentionally trying to make anyone in a mile radius glare at him in disgust. Which I did. And so I therefore [silently] say, "Please whistle elsewhere!"

As a side note, happy Friday the 13th.