WHOA WHOA WHOA HOLD UP

Gentle readers, observe as our corpse spasms grotesquely, another gurgling breath drawn into the wet and sinewy pile of smoking gristle that once served as our lungs. Be not aghast at our undead respiration, instead, we beg only that you watch onward with the clinical detachment of a Victorian corpse-thief, or perhaps some kind of modern insurance adjuster.

What a world! Gas is cheap, and there are some decent bands around now. Also, did we miss a chance to gush over Obama? We did! Hooray for Obama!

One cannot help but make lists (lists!) of the life-altering events that happen in one's life. First and foremost, the fall of Communism. Secondly, 9/11. Thirdly, Obama is elected. The common thread through these isn't hard to piece together - people coming together. The Berlin Wall brought a sense of completeness, of an end to the fractious and childish nature of the Cold war. September Eleventh brought people together in the most dire way possible, made us huddle together for warmth in the face of not just an uncaring universe, but one that is actually subtly menacing. And Obama is, in many ways, the coda to 9/11, the antidote to almost a decade of Bush-era big-brother tactics, a man promising to unite an entire country, instead of a neo-con babbler, taking perverse glee in alienating themselves further and further from anything resembling a conscientious citizen.

My great burden is that I am trained to see things in a literary sense - my eyes strain to trace the arc of rising action of the bildungsroman of Obama, of the tragic presidency of George W. Bush, the Prospero of our Tempest, begging us to free him from the island of history with our applause.

Whoa, how's that for a shitty metaphor?

Anyway. The difficulty with this biz-ness is that reality doesn't serve as a cohesive arc, or rather, that it's too cohesive. We are all the main characters of our own lives, so that makes it hard to achieve any kind of clinical separation needed in order to analyze a given work. Maybe if we could achieve it, we'd unlock our chakras and turn into buddhas - isn't that what enlightenment is, after all? Rising above the cycle of constant rebirth and involvement, and just sorta chillin' out?

This is all a silly and meandering thing. Suffice it to say, there will be more silly and meandering posts later. Hopefully, less self-indulgent. But probably not! Elevennames hooray!