Listen up, you Titans of Internetlandia! It’s time to drop that pose of harried self-hatred and run from the glums!

>> So look in the mirror (ignore the badly dried bangs, the bruise-like eyecircles, the pallor of doomed fish) and repeat after me:

You are doing what you can, you who have so much, but feel such lack. These are trying days and you’re mostly fine. Everything else is just momentary wobbles and temporary fury. Try not to kick the dogs, even though their toileting has slipped and their behavior would irritate saints. Try not to come down so hard on yourself. Try to be kind and generous and infrequently alone. Practice the long view and if that doesn’t work, go la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you until the mood passes. Don’t be your own enemy.

>> Now look at the screen (ignore the ratcheting misdeeds and hate-screeds, the fumbled opportunities, the crowing of the schaden-junkies) and repeat after me:

We can’t quiet the voices in our heads, but we can kill the voices on our screens. Take a break from the inanity, the insanity, the endless natter and chatter. We may miss an event or ten—a wrong move, a sudden scandal, a dire outbreak—but we’ll be shielded from the response, as well, the unending overreactions of all those galling twats who would make us feel less. Do not let them in.

>> Then look out the window (ignore the yellow dagger-cicles hanging from tired eaves, the filthy shit-bespecked snow, the relentlessly leaden sky) and repeat after me:

We’ve almost conquered January, the month that makes a witch’s tit look tropical. March will roll around one of these days and then we’ll complain about the rain. Even summer will come soon enough and we’ll wallow in the swelter, longing for the cooler north, just we dream ourselves south in wintertime. But better days are on the way: there will be warm evenings on porches with friends. There will be bike rides. There will be epic treks with dog and camera. Just hold on.

And what are you telling yourself to make it all better as we trudge into February?

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Gah. I am so tired of elections, of the endless politicking that passes for discourse these days. We’re fresh off an outlier election which those paid to jabber are duty bound to inflate into some sort of referendum on everything, from Obama to Everyman. My google reader is seething with it.

Trust me, except for Maine’s gay marriage heartbreaker (pouring out a forty for mah LGBT peeps), all this means ZERO in the larger scheme. It’s just a nervous electorate mostly not showing up to vote, and some twitchy pundits searching for meaning in every little thing. Sometimes a tea leaf is just a tea leaf.

And all I can say is BORE ME FUCKING LATER. Keep your eye on the prize, elected officials*. Grow some balls, democrats. And shut the hell up, media yappers. Go read a book or something. Interview some innovators who are making a difference in your community. I’ve had it with the braying of the ninnies.**

Can we just agree on the lessons here?

> Politics are local, unless they’re not.

> We’re in a stick-it-to-the-man cycle, so bad governors don’t get re-elected, even with a shiny D by their name. Right now, voters would rather elect a new chief dumbfuck than ride it out with the devil they know. All this will change.

> Gay marriage should not be subject to the tyranny of the majority; they need to decide that shit in the courts. The herd is big and dumb and needs a little push. So make it real and give people some time to forget about it. It’ll get boring and normal quite quickly. This is not abortion; there are no defenseless fetuses to get all shouty about. Grownups making a commitment do not make for compelling scare-visuals; people will not be carrying signs of two dudes on a wedding cake in twenty years.

Thus endeth the rant. Now I need to go read a book, or make a difference in my community.

*Health care reform, climate change legislation, economic recovery, banking regulations with teeth, and oh, yeah, AfPak.

**And lord, I know I’m one…

Photo by Dennis Hopper (!!!), via

A while back, when we were feeling less frivolous (we being me, of course, your subtlest rudder), before spring was in our crosshairs, and we were being dazzled by daffodils and the hope of warm nights and neglected jackets, I wrote a post about, oh, politics, I guess. (Perhaps screed is a better word? Or invocation?) Whatever it was, that was back when I was being all thoughtful (thoughtful and silly seem to be our two operating speeds), while these days, I find myself as serious as a sack of kittens.

I was reminded of my earlier post, because the same words that have been taped to my monitor through five years and two houses came across my screen in needlepoint form, like a dire reminder from A-Linc:

And don’t let the homespun swoops disguise the slicing knife. While the Obamas just wooed the world with some American exceptionalism we can believe in, the opposition is manning the embattlements and calving off crazies who play shoot ‘em up in places where people get stuck: nursing homes; immigration centers; churches, even. And the economy, still she craters, although we’re a nation of blessedly short attention spans: Our dollars flow out the bottoms of our pockets, but have you seen the daffodils? Tra and la, and any day now, we shall wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled.

Still, it’s near-spring and the snow will stop falling soon (I make no such promise about the sky). So listen to the mermaids singing, each to each, and go on: dare to eat a peach.

Stitchery by Maira Kalman, from her wonderful series on Lincoln, via Hello Bauldoff.

I’m pretty sure we’ve locked down the ninja vote for our upcoming election. Take that, McPalin!

Hi-ya!

(And there you go, that’s today’s word of the week. It can nestle up alongside “hi-yo” and “heya” in the ongoing conversations I have with particular people. Well, a certain person. You know who you are. Hi-yo!)

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I just got an email from Donna Brazile, telling me how to get the Obama party started (woo-to-tha-hoo, my peeps!). That’s right, the Donna Brazile, democratic operative and frequent cable TV pundit (she’s what they call a 3-fer: have one librull black chick on, and that’s more two more chairs free for right-thinking bidness-minded individuals who <3 their country. And god.)

Oh, and you guys, I got an email yesterday from John Kerry. He’s all up in my mailbox every week, though. I think someone’s got a crush. He’s going to have to get freaky-deaky with Rahm Emanual, if he wants to win my ass.

I even get mail from Ted Kennedy and John Edwards, and aren’t they a little busy right now? 

Sometimes Al Gore comes calling, and I get a little dizzy. He’s, like, NEARLY BONO, so that must mean I am NEARLY BONO’S GIRLFRIEND.

See? I told you I rock!

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