11/3/04: All But Over, Mefears

I have to admit something.  Maybe I'm just a coward, but up until a few days ago there was a teeny part of me that wanted George Bush to get his four more years. Maybe it was just a defense mechanism, like pretending you don't care if your team wins the championship game. But a very real part of me wanted to see Bush deal with this mess he's made.  He's like a spoiled little child who's thrown his toys and crayons all over the room. And there are so many toys, it's going to be real hard to clean them up in four years' time.  This part of me, this internal traitor, wanted to see Bush fail unequivocally for four more years, so that all the idiots who voted him back in could finally understand what was painfully obvious to so many of us.  The guy's a clown.

I prayed against another terror attack in the U.S., but I also knew if it happened on Kerry's watch, the Bushies would point at the carnage like Chuck Knoblauch pointing at that ball rolling down the first base line, with a hand on his hip and a bitchy look on his face.  See? I told you Kerry was soft on terror. When the truth is, the terrorists are bound to strike again. And with the global reputation damage Bush has done, they'll be striking ten years from now as well. This confused part of me wanted the Bush backers to understand that. And I also didn't think it was fair for Kerry to wander into the middle of this mess and have to pick up the pieces.  I mean, Iraq? What do you do about that?

So there definitely was a part of me that wanted to see Bush slip on one of his own legos and crack his head open in full view of the world.

And then a funny thing happened today when I first peeped the wonkette shady exit polls that Pete linked on his site.  I realized how badly I wanted John Kerry to win, and I realized how possible it really was.  Sure, he'd be walking into a beehive wearing a jockstrap coated in honey, as Dan Rather might say, but as a human being I'd much rather see him in that beehive than Bush. I started to think about Kerry winning, and how that would be a definable step forward for our country.  And I started getting excited.

Now it's 12:29 am and Ohio's looking huge. This is one crazy election.  I really don't know what the hell's going to happen. I'd say it's about a 39% chance right now.  Whatever happens, I am just going to look forward to more days like the one in the picture above right.  They'll come again.

1:33am.  It's looking very bleak. Here are a few provisional gas faces to be distributed in the event of a Bush win:

-The Red States.  I mean the ones that are always red. Fuck all of you.  I would rather travel to Afghanistan than South Carolina.
-Ohio. Why Oh Why Oh Why Oh? Why couldn't you come through and do this for us? Idiots.  I knew I should never have trusted you.
-Iowa. Not only are a dangerous number of you casting your votes for Nader, and therefore for Bush, but you have picked the absolute wrong time to turn your back on the democrats.  What exactly was it that made you do it?  Are you afraid of gay people getting married or something? Are you afraid of terrorists? Trust me, you corn-fed morons, no terrorist is going to waste his time on your shitberg little state. I guess you're satisfied with Iraq and the economy and maintaining your status as a shitberg little state. You guys suck.
-Wisconsin. My people, you can do better. You're basically Iowa to me now. Regardless of which way this state breaks.
-Bush, for being such a terrible president, and Kerry, for not being able to give him the boot. I mean, Kerry lost the popular vote soundly. Even if he gets some miracle and wins the election, that's shameful.
-Nader. Not much of a factor in terms of votes, but as of this word being typed his votes represent the margin of Kerry's defeat in Iowa.  Can you holdouts all finally join the sane members of society in giving this guy a permanent, surgically attached gas face?
-America, for letting this happen.  I am just really, really ashamed to live here now. Fear 1, Hope 0.
-Florida, just because they're Florida.
-The electoral college. Someone explain why we are still on this system.  I know it hurt Bush more than Kerry this time, but it makes no sense to me. Next time, we all vote, and then we count all the fucking votes. And that's it. OK?  I wonder what our fledgling democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq make of this chaos. 

I'm sure I will remember more as this sets in and I sober up.

Well, it's time for George to start putting away his toys now.  The scary thing is he's going to get more toys in the next four years, like maybe a couple of Supreme Court justices.  We're all fuct like a Tennessee whore during carnival season.

This hurts more than the number Schilling and his band of thugs did on us. 

Props to Pete for running a highly entertaining real-time blog of the night.  Made the whole thing easier to take.

***

Whatever, you don't come to this page for astute political analysis. You come for the steak. But you stay for the Google Image Search game. Despite Big Jim Lang's gripe, I stand by "muttonchops" as a legit entry.  And I didn't spell it that way to be sneaky.  I was just searching for muttonchops, and by golly I found some.  Remember this rule: 3. The goal is not just to submit a search term which brought up the image in question -- you have to guess the term my dirty little fingers actually typed into the search box, pretty much exactly as I typed it. I reserve the right to grant leeway.  So, knowing that, you can choose whether you want to play. I promise not to intentionally deceive, and I issue a provisional apology if I have wasted too much of anyone's time.  Although isn't that the point?

OK, HERE IS TODAY'S IMAGE. DIG IN. Remember, no answers until noon.