First Entry--Back to Blogging

Hey, kids.

I'm not entirely sure why, except that my friend Emily observed in a MySpace comment that I should blog more, but here I am, back with a new blog. I did this for awhile back in the day, at polidano.blogspot.com. My goal at the time was to blog the GWB presidency, but I kind of lost steam on it after my dad posted a comment suggesting that doing so might kill me. I think, in retrospect, that he was wrong, and I'm a little annoyed and bitter that he took the wind out of my sails like that, but it was a bad eight years and I felt it, and so from Dad's perspective, I suppose, a case could be made. Anyway.

That's all over now, thank God. Eight years and change of genuine badness. I spent some of that time watching Scott McClellan pressers on C-SPAN and then drinking heavily and writing about it for a very small online audience. This time around, if it takes and I post more than once, it will be better.

Wow...just took a few minutes and scrolled down through the old blog posts. Good times. Well, not really, but it takes me back. I'd forgotten about the hijacked Greek bus, for instance. Ah, me. Well, I'm kind of drunk, and feeling nostalgic. Bear with me.

Emily and Sacha and I, with a little help from our friends (and random strangers), drank GWB out of office on Monday night. We started drinking fairly rotgut bourbon at the close of business, and got done and popped a split of champagne-like substance roundabout 10pm AZ time (which corresponds to midnight in Washington, DC). The original and ideal version of the proposed ritual was that we drink a shot for each year that we've had to deal with the vileness and evil that GWB visited upon America, and at 9:55 we would repair discreetly to bathrooms to stick fingers down our throats to vomit it up, and then we would drink champagne at 10pm becuase the shithead wouldn't have another full day to damage our country. It didn't quite go that way--we wound up dividing the labor with the shots, and such vomiting as took place was more situational than anything, and so the ritualistic arrangement of the action was less than it could have been, but it went down, ultimately, not unlike the initial conception. So.

As it happened, there was a shot of Jim Beam (I felt dishonorable not doing well bourbon, actually, but Emily wouldn't have ridden it out with me, and Beam is pretty shitty, and so appropriately symbolic) for every year, and whoever was drinking that shot got to articulate the signature Bush atrocity of the year in question. Year by year, they were:

2000--the theft of the presidential election, and the fact that GWB wound up getting elected (legitimately, after a fashion) after a 5 to 4 electoral win in the Supreme Court. (Emily)

2001--the Bush photo op amidst the smoking ruins of the WTC, and the ensuing singing of his praises by the mainstream media as a "leader." (Dan)

2002--shock and awe, and the tanks rolling across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq to begin the war there. (Emily)

2003--"Mission Accomplished!" Not so much, jackass. (Dan)

2004--Abu Ghraib. 'Nuff said.

2005--Katrina. "Heckuva job, Brownie." 'Nuff said. (Emily)

2006--The achievement of an independent count of 1,000,000 fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq, if figured by counting dead Americans, Iraqis and Afghanis. Quite a landmark. (random dude in the bar)

2007--The US Attorney scandal. GWB succeeded in politicizing the professional political service in this country to an extent that nobody had even imagined someone trying to do until he and his cronies did it. (Dan)

2008--The mortgage crisis. Again, 'nuff said. Though, according to McCain, the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Of course, those fundamentals turned out to be the workers themselves (like us), and as workers they could lift lots of heavy stuff. Like tons and tons of mortgage-backed securities. Yeah. Shitheads. (Emily)

2009--GWB's farewell address. Breathtakingly, but unsurprisingly, he took no responsiblity for the shambles in which his eight years had left the country. Of course, if that was too lightweight for you, you could always watch Cheney's interview with Jim Lehrer the same night. Compared with Cheney, Bush was always a wuss in everything, including the aggressive shirking of responsibility. For me, I would have gone with Bush for all the shit he tried to fuck up as he was walking out the White House door, but props for this surprise nomination. (Sacha)

Anyway. That was Monday night. Since then, it's been a long week. In an odd way, though, oddly hopeful. I was fucking off at work today and surfing the internetz, that glorious system of tubes (not a truck...does anyone else miss Ted Stevens? Have fun in the pen, bitch.), and ran across this item, which I found oddly charming. Yay, Obama. We shall see, but if nothing else it's nice to have someone who's not a stupid, paranoid, insular asshole in the WH. I'm just sayin'.

Whatever. Apropos of the title of my previous blog, it is in fact the fourth day of the rest of our lives now, and I feel like the title of this new one captures my current sensiblilty fairly well...it's sort of hopeful--I mean, shit, there are stars, right?--and at the same time there's also the voice of Hal in the back of my head. "Hal, open the pod bay door." "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave."

Yeah. So. We shall see. This has been fun, though...there may be more blogging to come, on various topix. We shall see. Cheers, and thanks for reading, if you have.