Read this. Read this out loud every time you hear someone say "Liberal" like it's a dirty word.

I just may have found the one person in America with a fouler mouth than me, and the bad sense guts to print their opinions. I keep saying this, and I hope I don't turn into a stalker, but the Rude Pundit is my political idol. I love him. I want him to come and visit me so we can go out and drink ourselves into a coma as we screech invective against the Bush cabal and the filthy running dogs who call themselves journalists.

Remember this entry? From back in June, when I told you the story about my Senior VP telling us that the hospital was losing a trillion dollars a day, but that there weren't going to be lay offs?

And I said it was like the old joke about the cat on the roof? And our jobs were on the roof?
Yeah. And then there was three months ago, when they said there would be layoffs, but not in our department. Then last month, there was the announcement that there would be layoffs in our department, but only managers.

Today, the Veep announced that we were beginning to research outsourcing the entire department in an effort to save all our jobs.

Yes, you read that right. They'll outsource the entire department to some firm that will then hire us to do our jobs, so we won't lose them at all!

Repeat after me: These are not the droids you seek.

Or, if you prefer that I keep the same metaphor I started with (and you know how much I love consistency) The cat has now fallen off the roof, and broken many bones. The cat has gone to the vet. The vet has done everything it her power to fix the cat, but...

Last night, as expected, the RLA, the Artist Down The Street* and I watched the second presidential debate. We decided to do shots whenever the President used the phrase "Wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time" in an effort to defame Senator Kerry. Since this resulted in me being shit faced by 9:30, I had to write notes.

*I finally made up a name for my girlfriend down the street, whose name I wouldn't use out of respect for her privacy(Yeah. Right) She will now be known by her acronym:ADS. Not to be confused with the RLA, or Reknowned Local Artist, my husband.

Keep reading my notes:
What was with the wink Dubya just gave after answering Kerry on the Canadian Drug issue? What the hell was that about? Did he think that he'd just won the point? My God, Kerry just spanked the President's ass like Dubya was a naughty schoolgirl.

If we actually provide healthcare to everyone in America, that would be a bad thing? That it would lead to healthcare rationing? Shock and Awe, Fear and Terror... What a one-note.

Kerry's got the proverbial fire in the belly tonight.

"I'm a good steward for the environment." -- George Bush.
"That's just an Orwellian name for your bad environmental policies. We wouldn't sign the Kyoto Treaty. You are a part owner of a timber company." -- John Kerry

"I own a timer company? You wanna buy some wood?" -- George Bush, like he just took a slam dunk, and he swaggers back to his podium. He's kidding, right? He cannot think he won that exchange, either. He's either delusionion, or stupid. Or both. Or on drugs. Or all three.

Who would Dubya appoint to the Supreme Court in his second term? He says: I haven't thought of it, but ... if I need them all to vote for me? And then he smirks like that was funny. Dude, you stole the election, and some of us in this country took issue to it four years ago, and we're still pretty fucking pissed off at you, your family and your chicken hawk administration.

The ADS asks if this is as insane to us as it is to her. What: that President Bush actually invoked the Dred Scott decision in an effort to prop himself up in re: race relations? Or civil liberties, or something like that. Yeah. Pretty fucking insane.

And then he says that there is no litmus test except how they interpret the constitution. I'm drunk, but I still think that that would then, by definition, a litmus test.

Kerry jumps on women's right to choose as a constitutional right that his America will not go backwards on. He explains his understanding of the constitution as being precisely about how he can have one opinion and the questioner can have another and neither of them can use the government to legislate what the other person can believe. Gotta live with it, because it's right to live with it. It's the bottom line in the First Ammendment. If you can say what you think, so can the other guy. Period. End of sentence.

Bush says some shit about a "culture of life".

Waves hand. These are not the droids you seek.

Final Jeopardy question is: Name three times you've made mistakes in office.

Bush puffs himself, can't name anything and says: "I'm prepared to take responsibility for whatever mistakes history accords to me."? What kind of bullshit is that? History?

Kerry says that he may have voted to support the war, and committed money to it, but Bush screwed up how it was spent, and which is the worse crime... He keeps comparing himself to Republicans like Eisenhower and Reagan. Is that because they were less repugnant Repubs or is it the war leader thing with Eisenhower....

In short: smarmy and smug -- Bush, intelligent and poised -- Kerry.

Then we changed channels from C-SPAN to ABC and discovered that because he didn't drool or physically go after John Kerry, that the President was seen to have at least held his own. They're kidding, right?

And so to bed.

This year has sucked in ways that things have never sucked before.

I have suffered through death, hurricanes, more death, job uncertainty and more stress than I ever thought I could handle.

But yesterday, it was all made better by the receipt of a single e-mail from the forces behind White Party. I am going to get to live my most precious childhood dream and desire, and do so in the company of the most fabulous men on the planet, at one of the most fabulous parties on the circuit.

What am I going to do?
I get to be a mermaid at White Party. Tail, pearl tiara and all.

When I was a little girl, I used to spend my summers on the bottom of the pool, pretending to be a mermaid. My career ambition was to be the head mermaid (the one who got to wear the glittery tail) at Weeki-Wachee Springs.

I turn 50 in December, just a couple of weeks after this event. If that isn't kicking 50 in the ass and telling it to go home, I don't know what is.

When I turned 40, a friend built a big 4-0 out of straw and I took an acetelyne torch to it. We pulled bits and pieces of ash and melted beads out of the pool filter for two years. The screen had a scorch mark in it until the screens were replaced a couple of years ago.

It's not that I have a fear of growing older, as Jimmy Buffett would say "I'm growing older, but not up." Or maybe the late, great Satchel Paige is a better quote, "How old would you be, if you didn't know how old you was?"

Somewhere in my twenties. Old enough to be responsible, young enough to let responsibility slide once in a while.

I get to be a fucking mermaid. How cool is that?

The RLA and I watched the "debate" last night between Darth Cheney and Dennis Quaid look alike John Edwards. Isn't that boy just the cutest little thing, bless his heart?

The RLA pointed out that Cheney's suit was so dark that it absorbed the light and made it difficult for the television cameras to focus on him. I said that the Prince of Darkness is called that for a reason. The RLA also noted that once Edwards found his stride and really started to spank the puppet master, that Cheney seemed to fade. Oh, sure, he was still spouting vitriol and venom like Mt. St. Helens on a good (or is that bad) day, but he didn't really seem to have his heart in it.* It just seemed like the starch was starting to go limp.

*And does he really have a heart?

The thing that struck me the most was how much that liver-spotted old pile of dung looks like another old liver-spotted selfish wretch:


Yeah? What do you think?

So there I was, climbing down from the train this morning, listening to the racket of traffic and leaf blowers and random loonies, and unbidden, this came into my head.

The world is too much with us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

W. Wordsworth

Thank you very much, Professor Newman. Still with me thirty years later.