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In the early 1980s, or at least while I was in the US, Stanford University's Student Union used to be packed at lunchtime when the show was put on a larger TV screen, and high-brow students treated themselves to a low-brow break. I was hooked, too. After all, there was not much to look for in lunch when it consisted of a peanut and jelly sandwich that I packed each day.

One thing about a soap opera, it is bad cerebrally, but it can be good viscerally. In these past few days, as our political events unfold, I have felt like I've been watching new episodes of this daytime soap. None of them makes sense to me as much as the good old soap. But maybe something is wrong with my cognitive and emotive ability these days. Agility goes with youth. I perhaps need a rational emotive behavior therapy session in order to regain a happier state of mind.

Ours feels like the "Theatre of the Absurd", where characters are caught in situations in which they are forced to do repetitive and meaningless actions, to recite dialogues full of cliches and nonsense. There are a lot of dog-and pony shows proliferating in the media. Happy faces, solemn faces, embraces, and congratulatory and solidarity handshakes. They are the contrived displays put up to show us what we want to see and not what we need to know, so we come up with a sense of value.

All politicians are declaring themselves winners in the race to form a new, or rather several, coalitions that would garner enough heads to form a new government. Last time I took note, the combined number of members of Parliament that belong to these coalitions exceeded the total number of elected members of the chamber.

It is a Humpty Dumpty stage whereupon the statement "it is so, if you think so" acquires validity. There are the good, the bad and the ugly joining together, and parting ways, not on a daily basis, but sometimes on an hourly basis. Everything is done in the name of the "national interest" while the voice under the cupped hands whispers "these partnerships do not come cheap".

Past midnight last Saturday, the "treasure trove" broke open and the booty flooded out and shook up these coalitions that seemed to shed their leaves willingly like trees in the autumn. Christmas is still two weeks away, but this year Santa, or rather Santas, come early down the chimney with bags full of goodies. As I look at all the happy campers on the receiving end, I somehow get the feeling I am in the wrong profession.

But then I was made to realise that we Thais actually do not own the copyright on this money-for-grabs political activity.

On December 9 at 6 in the morning, the Illinois police knocked on the door of the state's governor with an arrest warrant. He was taken into custody and booked on the charge of "attempting to sell a US Senate seat", the one that president-elect Barrack Obama has just vacated. The state attorney of Illinois in his press conference stated that the governor, Rod Blagojevich, was apprehended because he went on "a political corruption crime spree that needed to be stopped".

Blagojevich, who is in his second term as governor, was caught on tape saying the Senate seat is "a [bleep] valuable thing. You just don't give it away…. I've got this thing and it's [bleep] golden".

One news commentator said he could not pronounce Blagojevich's name, so he simply called him "an idiot".

The FBI special agent in charge of the Chicago office characterized Illinois as "if not the most corrupt state in the United States, certainly one hell of a competitor". He went on to say that it was a state in which corruption resided in its DNA.

The statement does not come as a surprise as Chicago is a city that earned notoriety from Mafiosos like Al Capone, Joey Aiello and Sam Cardinelli. But I bet he must not have known about our politics. In the pantheon of political corruption, Thailand definitely has its place above Illinois by several notches. And the most telling thing is, over there in Illinois they call corruption a crime. Here it has been compared to the piles. No wonder we do not arrest those who are guilty of it - while the pain continues for the rest of us who bleed from those swollen veins.

Come high and come low, the Parliament will convene on December 15 and we may have a new government. Everybody describes the situation as "fluid". In Shakespeare's "As You Like It", it is said, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…."

On our political stage we have a coterie of Brutus, Julius Caesar, the Little Mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpy, the Trojan horse, and Dilbert the cartoon strip, all spawning our purview.

Life, it is said, imitates art. Unfortunately, with our politics and all the money trials, life does not imitate art. It imitates (a la Woody Allen), bad television.