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welcome to the Chimpocracy
Saturday, January 20 2001
As stated in yesterday's entry, I never became particularly drunk yesterday even though it was rare at any point in the day to find me without a beer in my hand. There's an upper limit to how drunk I can get from beer these days, and I don't think I ever approached it. Nonetheless, the combined volume of alcohol is evidently all that matters when God decides what sort of hangover to dish out the next morning and consequently I felt pretty bad all day. I wasn't, however, anywhere near as bad off as my housemate John and his "partner" Chun. John can never do anything half way, and last night he and Chun managed to devour seven hits of ecstasy between the two of them, rationalizing that if they just did enough of it they could have an ecstasy trip encompassing both Friday and Saturday nights. But it didn't work out that way. What little serotonin reserves they had were wrung dry well before they ate their last pills. Today they were like zombies and rarely left John's bedroom. John even hung a sheet over his window so it would be extra dark in there.
At around noon John happened to be at the foot of the stairs when the doorbell rang. Ding dong, it was well-dressed middle-aged man and his wife going door to door handing out religious tracts. The man had a big embarrassed smile as he beheld us in all our hungover glory, a smile which quickly turned into one of those knowing titillated smiles that Christian fundamentalists often get when they think they're looking at a pair of ass rimming faggots. I expected the guy to want to stand there and talk for awhile but I guess he could feel our pain and he said just leaving the tract would be good enough. This was a merciful thing because otherwise John (who had been the one to answer the door) would have handed him off to me.
It was another beautiful day. Actually, it was much more beautiful, sunny and warm than it's been in well over a week. Today was probably the day the CTO thought it was going to be yesterday when she took the UK team to the beach. Anyway, I decided to go for a walk to my workplace to retrieve my bicycle from where I'd left it.
Later I was craving one of those cheap Japanese beef bowls they sell down at the corner Yoshinoya. I don't know what it is, but when I buy cheap restaurant food I never want anyone I know to see me eating it. I guess I can only fully enjoy it if I don't have to field questions, possibly (God forbid) offer taste samples, or contend with nutritional critiques. So, instead of going home, I sat on a Big Blue Bus stop bench and ate my beef bowl before a varied traffic of anonymous automobiles waiting to cross Bundy in the west-going lanes of Santa Monica Blvd. Later I went shopping at the Brentwood Ralphs and bought a number of things including avocados, a large container of V8 Juice, Swiss cheese, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. I already have a toothbrush and toothpaste of course, but I've decided to trick out the downstairs shower with a "dental station" after being inspired by an amusing article documenting the life and times of a laid-off dot commer.
Then it was nap time. That's the best thing about weekends these days. Nap time, glorious nap time.
In the evening, John, Chun and Fernando all went out to see a movie and I hung back by myself and did my usual antisocial computer thing. Despite his ecstasy hangover, John was still managing to be hilarious before the movie, translating his "Altoona donut hole joke" into a version as it would be told by a serious person trying to sound serious, complete with all manner of excessive pseudo-intellectual verbiage.
Meanwhile in Washington, DC, George W. Bush, a boyish gleam to his barely-comprehending eyes, seized the reigns of power in this the most powerful nation in the known universe. The Chimpocracy has begun. Anti-intellectual forces throughout the flyover country, turning up their noses at the effete oratory of Al Gore, have somehow eked out an Electoral College end run around the democratic majority. When you think about all the little things that, had they not happened, we wouldn't be here today, it almost makes you, well, itch. Imagine if Ralf Nader had been struck by a meterorite, or if the butterfly ballot had placed Al Gore at the top instead of George W. or if Monica Lewinski had decided to do only one thing with her mouth. But here we are, entering a time that plenty of people are implying is a descent into darkness [via Halcyon]. Is it always this way when the reigns of power are handed to the artless, brutish, gun-toting henchmen of the right? Were things described with such starkness when Nixon and Reagan took over? I suppose they were, actually.
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