It all started so innocently. As Labor Day kicked the Presidential Campaign season into full gear, I made the decision to be undecided. Hell, I undecisively decided, if all the attention in the Free World was now being directed at the foolish people who couldn't make up their minds between two rather starkly different candidates, far be it from me to pass up the opportunity to be shamelessly pandered to--so I threw my dunce cap in with the foolish, shoulder-shrugging horde. Silly me. I figured a week--tops--of silence from this worldwide (yes, I get hits from India, Russia, and even North Dakota) hub of wisdom would mobilize both political parties into beating a path to my door, slavishly courting me, and trying to persuade me with all sorts of promises to make up my mind already. Surely the Republicans would notice I was refraining from posting an all-too-easy roasting of Paul Ryan and his Eddie-Munster-dressing-up-for-Halloween-as-Ronald-Reagan-while-wearing-Obama-ears costume and think, hmmm, maybe the guy's not all Democrat as we suspected. Surely the Democrats, with all their high-tech data mining et al., would smell something amiss in my failure to make nonsense jokes about the 47% or, much later, those binders full of women. But nothing. No pandering on my doorstep. Enter hubris: Well, fine, I'll just wait them out. This blogger has indeed learned something from reaching across the aisle and hitting the unbudging stone wall that is Mitch McConnell. I dug in.
That's when the conspiracy started. After a week or two of refusing to let the malarkey that accumulates in my brain to escape via my fingertips, I had a most unexpected revolt on my hands--my humorous brain cells petitioned to secede from my cerebral cortex. "There is no humor in being undecided," was their one and only cry of protest. "But this is the most important election in my lifetime," I responded in plagiarizing zeal. "I will not endure it without being pandered to." And then, unlike those secessionary-minded Texans who we all wish would just go ahead and do it then, my funny brain cells didn't laze around waiting for the world to give a damn, they split immediately. All I'll say is that it's very painful to follow the Cleveland Browns in-season without a sense of humor. Dark autumn days indeed.
And then, as I found it impossible to muster even a chuckle at Newt Gingrich's prediction that Romney would win in a landslide, I started getting a cluster of bullying emails from a Tampa woman who identified herself as Kelley Jill. She admitted that she had tried and failed to become a lieutenant groupie at MacDill Air Force Base (not even that ripe name could get me to chortle back in those arid days) and had now set her sights on becoming a blogger groupie. "Why me?" I repeated for the millionth time in my life. She cryptically answered, "Panache." Well, before I knew it, Ms. Jill had hacked past my seemingly iron-clad firewall and accessed my file of half-written, eventually-given-up-on would-be blog posts and threatened to publish them "to the universe." My God, I thought, any ten-second stumbled-upon reader of this blog recognizes its integrity--I can't have the universe reading my discarded, not-up-to-the-usual-high-snuffiness musings on the cuteness of porcupines, the genius of the word pshaw, the remote possibility that in the proper light and in the proper fleece jacket, Paul Ryan might maybe could get my vote as an also-ran in People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive Sporting an Eddie Munster 'Do Poll. So I played ball with Ms. Jill for a couple weeks, which, I might add, was only possible to do completely humorlessly--so, even in a storm, there's some sunshine. We exchanged emails, I admit, and even let her in on a few secrets re parentheses placement.
But then, speaking of storms, Sandy hit. Before I knew it, Kelley Jill was onto her next obsession: Pudgy politicans with thick accents intoning, "I don't give a damn" at every possible photo op. Of course, that did actually make me guffaw, and so I was all set to start blogging again, but Sandy took out my power for a few days. When it came back on, naturally, I was in a period of mourning for Karl Rove's sanity and just couldn't write a thing--on a grocery list from the time, all I could manage was the "or" of orange juice, a fitting conundrum for an at-one-time proud undecided (I did make up my mind eventually and voted for Roseanne Barr; she always makes me laugh).
The thaw actually began late on election night. My favorite moment of the entire campaign came when Obama and family came out to the cheering masses in Chicago and cute little Sasha had to tug at dad's coat and tell him twice, "behind you," to get him to turn around and acknowledge the supporters sitting behind the stage. Wow, the most powerful man in the world being told what to do by an eleven-year-old girl--pricelessly amusing.
"Behind you." That notion tugged at my own coattails. Ah yes, I realized after much soul-searching, behind me: spitoutyourgum. Can I commit, though, I wondered. Well, if Mitch McConnell can still be Mitch McConnell, and if the world can go on surprising us in its silliness (Broadwell, this Ben Ghazi character, bus drivers in Cleveland getting assaulted right and left, Wile E. Coyote allusions all over fiscal cliff stories, etc.) after such a supposedly important election, I guess I can do my part. Texas beware: my humorous brain cells are sheepishly returning to the fold one by one, admitting it's a cold world out there. And now, with the literary genius of Philip Roth calling it quits, and the completely absurd and superfluous and mindlessly delicious Twinkie disappearing from our diets, someone has to step into the void. Here I am.
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