Last Time Phil Lifted His Leg Up Like That Was When...

The world is in a financial meltdown, but you'd never have known it from the way these two kids were playing golf this afternoon. I've always loved my baby Anthony, but today he made me love Phil who has always seemed lifeless to me. I think the problem with Phil is that he has made too much money to enjoy golf as a game anymore. But today he high-fived like there was no tomorrow. Fortunate for us golf fans, there is a tomorrow.

Hang In There, Friend

An e-mail buddy of mine wrote me today and told me that he was HIV+. It was very unexpected and completely deflating. I wrote him back and told him that as time goes on, you don't fixate on the virus all the time. There are days when you just forget about it. But these are lessons that you learn on your own, and in your own time. Looking back on my most recent entries, I realized that I have not been writing much about HIV. I think it gets too exhausting to rehash the topic over and over. You force yourself to forget even though you know the virus will always remind you of its presence: because of the virus I always have to be home by midnight to take my meds; I don't allow myself to get close to anyone in a romantic way because I always end up being rejected; I think about death a lot more than I used to.

I am working on a third screenplay these days. It is a sad story about a father who kills his son. Who feels he has no choice to kill his son. Who has been dreaming of killing his son for the past fifteen years. I can't wait for days of happiness to return.

Obama Is Not Getting It

Well, maybe he is, but isn't letting on. The inconvenient truth here is that the American people do not pick their presidents based on the issues. They pick their leaders based on appearance and personality. Sound like a high school class president election? Perhaps. But that would be looking at things in too "negative" a light. My take on this is that Americans are by and large a very trusting people. The Japanese-American political economist Francis Fukuyama touched on this in his book called Trust in 1995. We elect our leaders and trust them to do the right thing. And why do you trust anyone to begin with? Because you connect with them on a certain, intrinsic level. No one has the time to make two lists of the myriad of issues that plague this country and then compare them side by side on an Excel spreadsheet. We trust that Obama will do the right thing. We trust that McCain will do what's best for the country. And yet, politicians know that they have to pay lip service to the issues because what they are really doing is revealing the politician's deeper instincts and values. I haven't heard much from Obama on the issues these days, and that's where he's going wrong.

Palin may not have experience, but lots of people are trusting that she will not do anything inherently wrong. And Obama's campaign knows this. The government is run by tons of leaders and advisors who will make sure that Palin will not do anything too seriously wrong once she is elected. Her role is to get McCain in the White House, and she is doing that job just perfectly at the moment.