V

Good evening! Thank you, thank you! Oh, you're too kind; it's too much. Yes, I know it's been months, but what do you think the name of this blog is supposed to imply, after all?

What better time to come back than now? The evening of the eighth officially marked one year of my presence in France. The original arrival was marked by Carlos and I downing unhealthy amounts of Raclette (I'm not going to link it to wikipedia, you can look it up). This year the date was marked by soaking up the huge victory across the pond as much as I could by means of ILX (www.ilxor.com) political threads, various right-wing websites and youtube. I didn't nearly fulfill my appetite for Schadenfreude but I had to sleep sometime. The Santorum picture of course, is never really topped by ILX's thread, and everyone just photoshops it with gleeful internet jokes. My photoshop is not as good but I like the double meaning of V for me personally. My comedy line about the election is that I haven't been in this good a mood since getting laid and it's surprisingly true. As others have said, it really has felt like six years of not really believing there was any hope for our country or at least for democracy in it. But it turns out the left was at least partially in denial about just how real Bush's hold on people was. I was, anyway. Just look at all the conservatives now talking about how the Democrats rig the elections!

Not that voting isn't an absurd joke in the USA, by the way. It's always fun to see how incredulous the French are that we don't just take a piece of paper and put it into a box--technology, man! Gotta be at the cutting edge...of weird voting procedures. Even my absentee vote had several pages of overly complex legislation no one cares about, and instructions to fold and tape or glue it. What is wrong with us?

But ultimately, the election results aren't simply created out of whole cloth, Karl Rove is just a fat guy who reads opinion polls every morning, and people really are as stupid as everyone says. Which is all very comforting. Only unbalanced smart people truly desire fascism, everyone else could care less what is going on.

Maybe the french girl who I gave an American flag hat to as a 'gen XYZ gag gift' will call me up now. Anything can happen!