Rest Stops on the Road to Damascus

Like all writers, I've suffered on my way to the recruitment office for the Shakespeare Squad.
An epic series of professional setbacks, a humiliating bid to join the foreign service and string of young smart & beautiful women who blew the explosive bolts at the first opportunity and chanced on a free fall escape.
But nothing quite describes the suffering attendant on listening to candidate Ed O'Reilly's paranoid and shrill speech today before the state democratic convention. Eyes bugging out, sweat streaming off him, his face set in the permanent constipated scowl of a schoolyard bully, Ed ranted and raved for twelve endless minutes trying to blame John Kerry for nigh everything up to including the current extortionate price of gas.
It was a performance worthy of Mussolini on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, screamed into the microphone and riddled with demagogic rubbish.
And what the hell it worked, he actually got 22% of the vote and access to the ballot, of course, John Kerry got the endorsement of the convention but the whole stupid farce has been handed over to the primary electorate, proof positive that guilt tripping the state convention at the top of your lungs pays.
Ed is a seedy riff on Allen Drury's "Fred Van Ackerman" character, loud crude and obnoxious, undeserving of the consideration he demands at the top of his nasty whining voice.
He will, in due course, need to take out many more mortgages on that million dollar heap of his in Gloucester before the summer ends. So I hope his enjoys his "victory" it is the last one he'll see for a while.