One can be thankful that in New Zealand we have such things as the Melbourne Cup, Powerball and an All Blacks test match against Ireland to keep us sane this week.
With any luck, which we'd all like in abundance over the next 48 hours in particular, we will beable to try to ignore the goings on in that other major event touching the globe as it does at the start of November every four years - to whit, at the risk of reminding people who would rather forget, the US presidential election, in which the final punches will be thrown in eight days' time. It's worse than cage-fighting.
For those who've lived in a cocoon these last few months, it's a contest between two the state of New York, ex-presidential wife Hillary Clinton in the blue corner of the Democrats, and unfortunately-wealthy Donald Trump, the buffoon carrying the red colours of the Republicans.
It is worth mentioning that these colours have little in common with the those of similar hue in New Zealand politics.
Thankfully, the whole political system, if this contest is to be seen as a representative of it, has little in common with what we have in New Zealand politics, or think we have.
There are actually some others in the contest, with the proviso in most cases that they aren't allowed to win it. There's Libertarian Gary Johnson, from New Mexico, and Jill Stein, the Green from Massachusetts, who, like the two rock stars in the race have access to the 538 votes of the electoral college.
The others who have access to 270, or more with the help of something called write-in access, are Darrell Castle, Rocky De La Fuente, Tom Hoefling, Laurence Kotlikoff. Evan McMullin, and Mike Maturen.
These are names which most of us have never heard of but are fast becoming those we would prefer to most remember, in the great US presidential farce of 2016.
