Crash and burn

AS I was typing my column, a cockroach decided to take flight and fly by right in front of my face. I watched as it fluttered its ugly little brown wings and landed just within arm’s length away from me.

I learned two things at that moment: that one, a cockroach is horrible at flying and can barely direct itself, and two, I might have anger issues judging by the speed and intensity of slapping the aforementioned cockroach with a pair of slippers. It took about less than a minute, several hard slaps, and throwing around a lot of bags and furniture just to get rid of the little stinker. But he’s gone.

Despite my temporary disgust over the roach and its dead body, it’s rather funny how easily the opening of this column has changed by just one flying cockroach. I earlier started out talking about politics and the elections and all of a sudden a cockroach appears and the game changes.

Funny. But then again, this still kind of feels like real-life, in a very cockroach-politics-this-is-all-very-figurative word play.

As elections draw closer and politicians up for the running play their annoying jingles and march across our televisions in a very uncoordinated and awkward manner, let’s not forget their flying skills.

Take time to look at each senator who is running and their course of flight. Because you never know, some of them might just have been or will be horrible fliers and they (and all of us) will just land in a big pile of mess. Or they land beautifully, which would be awesome.

Of course, there’s also the aspect of making the right pick and at the same time slapping away the people you think are unfit for office. I mean, what better way of showing the country that you (us, the people) are in charge than by putting the right people into office and slapping away all unwanted competition or finally getting them out of office? Now’s the time.

My roommate says that this is a very bad analogy: cockroach killing and elections. I must agree. I still blame the flying cockroach, though. But hey, it’s still kind of true. We’re about to purge a few offices (probably not with human-sizes slippers or pesticide) with our votes and it only seems fit that we take a more proactive role of finally putting more deserving people into office and stopping those who have crashed and burned.

So, my word of advice? Look out for flying insects. Some them are pretty— like a ladybug or a butterfly. But some of them are a bit nasty, so keep an eye out for them. And in our political case, keep an ear out as well.