Good goddamn, these new-presidency-birth-pangs sure are pretty fucking loud, aren’t they? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought I was finished for the year-it’s way, way, way past my politically-psychic bedtime-and I’ve been looking for a nice quiet place to lie down ever since Election Day, but no, the infant Obama administration and its erstwhile supporters on the “far left” have both robbed me of my sweet repose. Everyone seems to be swilling the sour grapes of Rageohol this winter, but as the whole world collapses around us all yet again, we still can’t seem to admit that Teh Rage is our precious cause of and solution to All of Life’s Problems.

Wow, is that enough hyphenation for one title? Probably not, but let’s not shove the porous boundaries of taste any more than we already have…but on the other hand, why not? It’s never stopped me before, and although there’s no real reason for this senseless recycling, I’m perfectly at peace with yet again Doing It Because I Can. See, for a multitude of reasons, I blogged a lot in 2008-more than ever before, and probably too much, even-whether it was for my personal blog or my band blog or my book blog. Yeah, that’s three (3) blogs, but like many other people, over the past decade I’ve discovered that the internet is a great place to indulge one’s vanity. And I am chock-full of that, man, so the past two years in particular have been basically dedicated to amusing myself-when I actually have time to do that-while the world burns.

Changeovers can be brutally destructive things. Many re-inventions happen in the wild and chaotic aftermath of massive, revolutionary change, but many more take place during the subtler transitions. Inevitably, though, naked avarice, cognitive dissonance and crude denial reign supreme. The winners scramble for as many spoils they can get, and the fleeing losers become scattered refugees, wailing in wide-eyed, desperate panic. Once-apt definitions no longer apply, as all forms of communication are pulverized into malleable blobs of Play-Doh, ready to be built back into whatever lingua franca the victors see fit to impose.

Yeah, and I saw that crazy Great White Bastard coming at me, bringing ten tons of total terror with him–and I was okay with it. See, despite my relatively young age, I have a long history of tightrope-walking, water-skiing, and chum-trawling over various toothy monsters in the sorry seas of American politics. I have now seen nine presidential elections (1976 to 2008), and was eligible to vote (and did vote) in four of those: ’96, ’00, ’04, and this year. All of them were vile showcases of the worst this country has to offer, with shameless pandering and sniveling by electoral whores of all stripes. I did my best to counter that with, naturally, some of the most refined and urbanely arrogant apathy this side of a white jazz musician convention. Only it didn’t work.

Two posts in 48 hours? Hey, when a comic-turned-Senate-candidate throws down, hell yes. Watch our favorite carpet-bagging SNL alum and Minnesota U.S. Senate hopeful Al Franken do his thing that is my thing-drawing maps freehand. Oh, it’s on:

Nice job, Al. I mean that sincerely. But as long as I’m around, you’ll always be second best. Why? This is why:

Ah, the final blood-curdling days of October in an election year. Filth and stupidity on the radio, nudity in the streets, shameless pandering on television-and that’s just the World Series. No no, I won’t be meditating on the apparent collapse of the Tampa Bay Cinderellas as they turn back into pumpkins, because Gorgeous George Will can handle that, but recent developments both in baseball and politics have yanked my cerebrum into thoughts of Novembers past.

Yes, November: graveyard of many a politician who has succumbed to the brutal transparency of terminal narcissism. We don’t celebrate Halloween and  Día de los Muertos at this time for nothing, folks, and baseball is not the only Haunted Game in our nation’s twisted history. No, politics has that market cornered for the conceivable future.

Karl Marx told a rancid lie when he said that thing about history repeating itself first as tragedy and then as farce. If that whiny bastard had any balls he’d have told the truth which, as everyone knows, is that history only repeats itself as farce, because the mere fact of its repetition is obviously always a cruel joke from God. Of course, Marx probably didn’t believe in God, and I don’t really give a shit either way these days, but the goddamn vice-presidential debate had its way with me tonight and you all will just have to deal with it. I know, I know-I’ve always said that “smart people shouldn’t have to take any shit from stupid people,” but we all know that’s as big a farce as any of ’em, don’t we?

People never pay attention to how their body works, until suddenly it doesn’t. That’s when they really feel conscious of how bizarre and miraculous and utterly strange this thing is that imprisons their soul. This thing that throbs and pulses and sweats, that breathes and itches and gurgles and snots and shits. Then they know-when something’s wrong. Then maybe they pay attention and, if they’re not too consumed with fear, they try to do something about it.

Of course, sick people are in touch with this reality every minute of every day of their illness; they’re connected with the skewed rhythms of their malfunctioning bodies in ways that health nuts and appearance fetishists will never ever know. The reality of fragile impermanence. The absolute truth that this blip of existence they know is absolutely transient.  

Seriously, how much have you stuck it to the Man, man? How many gates have you crashed? How exactly have you put your money where your big, fat, opinionated mouth is? How much scratch (that you don’t have) have you freely given away to the corporate-whore candidate of your choice? How many low-to-no-information voters have you registered? How much have you phone-banked? How much have you driven a wedge into some poor bastard’s life, interrupting their self-important bliss with your do-gooder enthusiasm? How much have you reviewed the legislative track record, or current issue positions, of the candidate of your choice? Have you even, like, chosen a candidate, man? Don’t you know that this is the most important election, like, ever? Even more so than the last most important election ever?

Rock and roll stops the traffic indeed, boyo. I’d totally forgotten about this piece of bizarre trivia, but if the stars align with it, America’s most famous POW will go down to overwhelming electoral defeat. See, everyone’s favorite uber-corporate band of musical flyweights had been all ready to release a new album this fall, handily coinciding with the omnipotent Holiday Shopping Season, but apparently it’s “not ready.” This has major, major potential for putting Senator Obama over the top. @U2 Grand Poobah Matt McGee lays out the logic, and amazingly, it’s nowhere near as twisted as a Dublin pub-crawl with Shane McGowan:  

So…this was originally supposed to be something about how Brand America/Monied Interests/PermaGov/The Man is, in 2008, finally grudgingly acknowledging certain global sociopolitical realities by conceding the nomination of a major American political party to a black man. About how said black man and his crew had been following in the footsteps of great political marketers and ad men of the past-specifically, the past of 1960 and 1980-in creating an indelible brand with which to sell themselves to the American consumer population. About how, after all, this is the American Way, and that’s just what we do here.

So yeah, bitching and moaning on a mega-blog is probably not the best thing to do on a Friday night at 2am, but I’m not feeling the veepage-love tonight that seems so insistent and yet so forced.

In the darkest of times-indeed, in those times when it only seems dark, but is actually some other shade entirely-in my weak, shameful moments of worst malaise, I turn to the Doctor, who makes me smile every time. For an admittedly roundabout, but strikingly current example, try “Here Come De Judge”  from Thompson’s S.F. Examiner column, 9/21/87:

By the end of the week [Judge Bork] looked like a big winner, with a solid 8-6 plurality that stonewalled Ted Kennedy, embarrassed the Democratic majority and left Joe Biden’s ’88 presidential campaign in a pile of stinking ruins.