It's American election year again, and I had been thinking about writing an American Election Special Adventure series, like the one I did a few years ago for the last British election, but this new project is proving to be a bit difficult. This is because British Politics has something America doesn't. It has characters that inspire adventure writers to write about zombies and vampires and adventure. It's very easy to imagine Ed Miliband leading a secret life as a Superhero, and it is quite simple to imagine that David Cameron might lead a double life as the King of the Zombies. That adventure inspiration just isn't there in American politics because its characters are too banal.
There's Mitt Romney who looks a bit constipated, then there's Barrack Obama who is too serious to make fun of. And then there's the actual politics. It's not going anywhere. It's stuck. They're all still arguing about the same things they were arguing about two years ago. The Economy, Unemployment, and Obamacare. But they just talk about it, and then they don't do anything. There is no inspiration there for political comedy at all. There's no battle against the stagnation of the universe.
If I was writing in the 1930s depression I could have written about Hoover and his great big Dam and the colony of vampire pixies who tried to stop it being built. If I was writing in the 60s I could have written about Kennedy sending men to the moon and meeting evil spacemen who wanted to eat their toe nails. But in this election there is nowhere to add excitement like this because these two candidates aren't making any adventurous stakes on the future.
It would be really great for me and my fellow spoof writers if they set a fantastic goal and made everyone run to try to make it happen. Like, feeding all the poor people in America, or sending a man to Mars, or freeing the world from the tyranny of oil and gas profiteers. And while I was thinking this, I got my idea for my adventure series. Maybe the reason they are all trying so hard to look dull is to divert our attention away from something massive. And then I decided that that something massive could be a giant sea lizard the size of 20 battle ships that causes tidal waves with its tail and eats cities for breakfast, but not lunch or dinner because it only eats once a day.
And that's what I've decided to run with for my election campaign story this year. All the candidates trying to be cheerful and happy because they don't want anyone to find out about the lizard who is swimming around in the oceans. At a push, I can keep going with that for at least a month. But that still leaves another month until the massive election. Things aren't looking good. Hopefully, however, by that time one of them will have decided on a fantastic goal for me to write about, to save me writing about sea monsters. But I'm not getting my hopes up.