a switch on Mitch / present but not really voting

Philip Stevens photograph on Wikipedia

Oh, for heaven's sake. How strange. A friend of mine just shared a dream in which he visited University College in London. In the student center there (this is factual, not a joke), on public display in a large glass case (shown here), is the preserved body of the famous English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), quietly seated in a chair, so that, even in death, he might still attend meetings ("present, but not voting").

It was Bentham's original wish that his head would also be displayed, but its mummification (albeit successful technically) "left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull." While no longer on display (it had become the "target of student pranks"), there is a photograph of the head on Bentham's Wikipedia article, as well as elsewhere online.

Enough of that. Back to the dream of my dutiful friend: in his nocturnal misadventure, when he visited Bentham's case, it was not his body on display. Instead, it had been inexplicably switched with that of American congressman Mitch McConnell, the "sitting senator" from Kentucky. How bizarre. Fortunately, no votes were taken during the dream.