The Republican frontrunner has a very strange way with words, while in Colorado the students are going to pot
✒I'm back in Boulder, Colorado, for the Conference on World Affairs which is, as I may have said before, basically a piss-up with speeches. The snow has almost disappeared from the Flatirons, the jagged stretch of the Rockies that looms over the town, and the sun shone from a deep navy sky almost all week.
Colorado is one of the states that has legalised marijuana for medicinal use (ie the treatment of more or less anything, such as "depression caused by not having any drugs to smoke"). The authorities here received 120 applications to dispense pot, in a city with just 30 pharmacies. Some of these tiny places try to pretend they are genuinely ministering to the sick, with names such as Med Shed. Others are more upfront, such as Weed World.
To buy pot you only need a card from your doctor saying you need to smoke it, and it's amazing how many students in this campus town have acquired the cards. But pot is still illegal under federal law, and the feds are trying to find all kinds of ways to close these operations down. The police code for drugs is a 4/20, so next Friday, April 20 in American notation, they are going to have a massive smoke-in on campus. Last year an estimated 11,000 students turned up. It will make an impressive cloud.
✒Everyone here is dazed by the election, and especially by the near-certain choice of Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee. One cartoon showed a puzzled voter looking at the list of Republican names, with "none of the above" along the bottom. "Well, he's the closest we could get." As one of the late-night comics said: "Republicans are not excited. It's like taking your sister to the prom."
Romney has famously changed all his policies since he was a liberal governor of Massachusetts. He is now running against his old self. Obama, a big disappointment to many people who voted him in, is – as the New York Times pointed out – basically running on the sole platform "I'm not Mitt Romney". So is Mitt Romney. The election will presumably be won by whoever least resembles Mitt Romney.
✒ Romney says weird, off-putting things at the same rate as George W Bush did. "I like to be able to fire people who provide services to me," he said. Talking to the unemployed he said, "I'm unemployed too" which might be technically true, though last year he made $374,000 (£234,700) in speaking fees alone. Speaking of his deep regard for American automobiles, he revealed "my wife drives a couple of Cadillacs". In Michigan he announced, "I love this state. The trees are the right height."
There was a flurry when it turned out they had gone on holiday taking the family dog on top of the car. He responded, "Peta [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] are not happy that my dog likes fresh air." He once declared that "corporations are people too". As so often, you can work out roughly what he means but are baffled by the way he says it. Though it's hard to pick the bones out of this: "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in."
David Letterman said: "He looks like you would see his picture on a packet of men's briefs." And he's a practising, active Mormon, a fact that the Democrats are so far too fastidious to exploit. But that might change if things turn nasty. Sorry, when things turn nasty.
✒One of the speakers here is Seth Shostak who runs the Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence in California. This is not a quest for little green men, but a scientific attempt to discover if we can detect radio signals from other worlds. Not long ago, Seth told me, he bumped into John Cleese who was with Keanu Reeves. Cleese inquired: "We are here for a reason, aren't we?"
"I replied: 'If you'd asked me that question 100m years ago, I'd have said you were just another dinosaur. And, frankly, nothing has changed.' I don't think he was too pleased by that."
✒Channel hopping last weekend (my host has several hundred on his cable system) I came across an American MasterChef lookalike, but with the somewhat more aggressive title of Chopped! So the presenters can say Apprentice-like to the losers: "You're chopped!" But what the two shows have in common is that you would not want to eat the dishes. The winner on Sunday had made a dessert out of granola bars, solidified brown sugar, and roasted tomatoes. It looked quite disgusting.
✒Did anyone call to your attention the fact that the Titanic sank exactly 100 years ago? I'm pretty aged now, and in 1956, as a schoolboy, crossed the Atlantic with my family on the old Queen Elizabeth. It was the last year more people crossed by sea than by plane, which was far more expensive. Rationing had not quite disappeared in Britain, and to a growing boy it was a miracle that we could eat as much food as we could possibly want – even in third class. Luckily we didn't hit an iceberg, so there was no need for Cunard employees to batten down the hatches and keep us from the lifeboats. It was a fabulous way to travel, as I remind myself as we taxi to the runway, strapped into a chair fit for an eight-year-old, to tuck into lasagne made from recycled in-flight magazines.
✒More labels etc next week. In the meantime, I loved the story from Stephen Prasher about his friend who owns a bookshop in Essex. A customer wanted George Orwell's Dining Out in Paris and London, and would accept nothing else.