Faster, Pussycat…Kill! Kill!

I just proudly cast my vote for the man whose most memorable campaign promise was, “I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.” Then while walking home I saw a young woman whose garb had a pronounced hippie tilt, twirling around on Market Street while waving a Kerry sign and flashing the peace-sign at motorists. Some peace candidate. I’m praying Kerry wins alright, but circumstances have made him the damn strangest candidate in a while: a sheep in wolf’s clothing, an obvious peacenik forced to accuse the president of not killing enough people, when everyone knows he’ll only try to reduce the violence should he win. All this in a yahoo political climate that makes it impossible for anyone to even raise the subject of why 9/11 happened…Goodnight, Irene. Well, good luck to you, John, and to the rest of us while I’m at it.

It seems we’re fated to know only two types of election in our lifetime: the nerve-shattering squeaker and the soul-destroying landslide. I spent the ’72 election getting drunk in a Houston titty-bar with Glenn Smith (I still tear up whenever I hear “Witchy Woman”) and the ’84 election in Cuernavaca with a bunch of American duffers who thought they were auditioning for a dinner theater production of The Year of Living Dangerously. But tonight, being an older and wiser man, I’m merely laying in the scotch and tranquilizers for tonight’s televisual festivities. I just wonder who’s going to make me kick out the TV screen first, George W. Bush or that blithering idiot Dan Rather…