a new kind of hero

i was reading the current issue of TIME magazine on the subway this morning, and i read a short interview with boris johnson, the former member of (british) pariliament and sometimes game show host who is running as the conservative's candidate for mayor of london (england). educated at eton college and then at baliol in oxford (where my own beloved robertson davies studied), he is very well pedigreed and trained and has been in the public eye in britain for some time. but i didn't know any of that until i looked into him. here are some of the quotes from TIME that describe him and describe to you something about me for liking him:

• Readers not yet acquainted with his signature style will get a flavour of it from this verbatim response to TIME's quiestion about whether he considers himself a conviction politician: "I certainly have a range of convictions. Not for anything serious. God. I don't have convictions, actually, by the way. No, no, no. Sorry, I don't have any convictions in a court of law, apart from speeding when I was very young. But I have plenty of political convictions. Can you rescue me? God."
• Wags in Westminster have since dubbed him Johnson "the Fumbulator." He responds with mock humility: "A man not famed for his eloquence found fault with my delivery and general mastery of public speaking. And these are things I obviously have to overcome."
• "My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."
• He recently incurred the wrath of Conservative colleagues by urging support for Hillary Clinton on the premise "Vote Hillary, Get Bill." He explains that he was trying to make a serious point about America's damaged standing in the world, noting "Things come into my head that I find simply impossible not to say, and then all sorts of chaos breaks out. But I think it's much better that way than endlessly prerehearsing, sanitizing, homogenizing, pasteurizing everything your say to the point of macrobotic extinction."

while he clearly lacks the seriousness of a barack obama, i think that this kind of multi-tasking charisma is charming and indicative of a high inteligence. now if someone can confirm that he uses an over-abundance of parenthetical asides and that he loves postscripts in emails, i might try and emigrate to england and cast a vote for him.

- g

song of the day: people are strange, echo and the bunnymen (covering the doors)