Caroline Kettlewell: Journal

November 2004

So here it is, November 2. Election Day. Need I say more? Now that both sides have vilified each other down to the last bitter potshot, and battalions of attorneys are poised to enter the fray the moment the polls close, and the fairness, security, reliability, and trustworthiness of the entire polling system, from voter registration to ballot counting, has been cast into doubt at every turn--well, does anyone really believe we'll all wake up tomorrow, dust our hands, say, "Thank goodness that's all over with," and get back to being a working democracy? I think not. If there ever was a prevailing spirit of goodwill in our nation's political realm--a faith that, while good people may differ, we're all in this together--it's long gone. I worry about the outcome of the election, but even more I worry that, to function, a democracy requires a prevailing faith in the fundamental fairness and reliability of the system. Without that faith, the system falters.

And yet, it's such a perfectly beautiful October day outside.

On the other hand, it's also....The Fall.

Ooooh, the metaphoric and ironic possibilities.

What I'm reading: I'm between books at the moment. Last week I was reading the 2004 edition of Best American Travel Writing along with Augusten Borroughs's new book Magical Thinking. In the former, I particularly liked John McPhee's piece on riding with an 18-wheeler long-haul trucker, a strangely disquieting essay.
On my I-pod: I just finished Jasper Fford's Something Rotten, fourth in the Tuesday Next series.
On the tape deck in my car: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Interesting language event of the week: Lately, I've taken to using the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" to mean "completely buy into some sub-culture to the point where you lose rational perspective." The reference, of course, is to the infamous and tragic Jim Jones cult mass suicide in Guyana in 1978. So, admittedly, tasteless dark humor. But it's one of those expressions that concisely sums up an idea.

Now, I have been fully under the impression that I coined this expression in a moment of inspiration--just as I remember the day that my mother and I decided that WWJD ought to mean "What Would Jesus Drive?". And lo, just as, soon enough, "What Would Jesus Drive" started showing up in popular culture references, blow me down if "drink the Kool-Aid," with precisely the same intended meaning, showed up not once, but twice in this week's Sunday NY Times--once in the magazine, and once in the business section.

I read an article a while back that said that many name trends (the sudden efflorescence of "Tiffany" or "Justin" all around the country) appear to spring up spontaneously in multiple places all at once. Could that be true of turns of phrase as well? But why the sudden appearance of an expression that references an event that took place 26 years ago? Mysterious stuff!

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