Scene: The car on Oregon Highway 101. We are driving home from the coast. Somehow the discussion has turned to what a John Burridge Presidency would look like.
Mark: "...and John would be the kind of president who would Push The Button..."
John: (somewhat indignant) "I would never Push The Button."
Mark: "...because he gets passionate. Oh I don't know what, but something would fill him with Righteous Anger."
John: (nodding his head in agreement) "Okay; there is that Righteous Anger thing (thinks about several incidents). But I'm sure that it would be something absolutely horrible provoking me..." (wonders if maybe...)
Mark: "Sure; you'd rationalize it. And I can hear you saying, 'Don't we have just a small one?'" (Holds hand up with thumb and index finger really close together.)
John: (snorting because he was, in fact, just thinking, maybe a really small one...) "I always said I'd be a horrible president."
Mark: "Yeah; you and Galadriel."
John: (quoting) "All shall love me, and despair." (Secretly pleased that Mark has drawn an ironic parallel between himself and Galadriel, and briefly wonders how he could get a cool magic fountain with a silver basin in the back yard... Spends the next few minutes imagining himself singing the Queen of the Night's Revenge Aria, finger poised over an opera set Button, and tries to rework the "Sarastro has betrayed me!" part as a political diatribe )
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