Congratulations, Americans!

You're not as stupid as you look! Though it would admittedly be pretty difficult for you to be as stupid as you look!





See what I mean?

(By the way, what's Rumsfeld doing in that photo above? It looks like he's recreating the process by which he broke through his egg's hard protective shell and first entered the world as a brash, young baby lizard.)

It was a night of big surprises. Well, okay, one big surprise: the Republicans didn't cheat effectively. Everything else was pretty much expected.

Joe Liarman beat Ned Lamont despite the handicap of being born the world's most useless, boring and sanctimonious prick. (Those traits play well to the hardcore Republicans base.)

A variety of Republican incumbents in the House, sycophants and toadies all, lost to a promising collection of Democrats pledging to return some measure of sanity to government and public discourse, and to get us the hell out of Iraq.

The support of Michael J. Fox and buffoonery of Rush Limbaugh helped pave the way for a possible Democratic takeover of the Senate.

And Little Ricky "Iraq's Just Like Mordor" Santorum, the man so nice they named co-opted his last name to describe used feces-stained lube, was evicted from his cushy job and forced to look for alternate employment.

Which brings us to tonight's celebratory caption contest...


Hello, room service? Can you recommend a quality, discreet drug-dealing gay masseur and/or prostitute? I've had a really long day.

Okay, that's my humble entry. Feel free to provide your own in the comments below.

All around the Web, I've been reading exultant, celebratory posts about the Democratic victories tonight. And any sort of change in our country's woeful direction over the past six years is cause for celebration. I haven't really felt joy so much as relief. Until the W. years, I hadn't been a hardcore political partisan. I've never voted for a major Republican candidate in my entire life, but because they're always sick evil fucks, not because of fealty to the Democratic Party. In theory, I'm willing to vote for anybody who actually makes sense when they speak and with whom I agree on Big Picture/personal philosophy type issues.

So this isn't really a "we won!" kind of night for me in those kinds of terms. I only feel loyalty to the Dems these days because of my intense loathing for the other guys. But this election has given me something I haven't felt about our country in a long time...Hope. Real hope that things might turn around. Maybe things will improve and maybe they won't. Recent history gives us little cause for sunny optimism. But at least now there's a CHANCE, whereas before the Congress was just going to rubber stamp any fool idea that entered George Bush's head. And that guy's a ludicrous assclown.

I also feel (and I almost can't believe I'm writing this...) kind of proud of Americans tonight. We have our first-ever female Speaker of the House. The first Muslim has been elected to our Congress. (Granted, he's a homegrown black Muslim and not the dangerously swarthy Arab variety.) 1/3 of evangelical Christian voters went blue. Voters in South Dakota rejected a near-total ban on abortions. Arizona became the first state in the union to purposefully reject enshrining anti-gay bigotry in its constitution. I can't remember the last time there was that much good news in an entire month, let alone one day.

So tonight's a real victory for America. We've been through a lot. We deserve it. So, to celebrate, I will now make fun of this clip from "Oprah," with Kirstie Alley showing off her new thin slightly less fat body for the first time.



She has clearly lost a lot of weight. I don't think anyone's really denying that. (I mean, she was impossibly enormous not too long ago. Just the exercize of walking on to Oprah's stage would have triggered her body to drop at least 5 pounds.) But I'm not sure she's really in bikini-on-national-television kind of shape just yet.

You don't want to rush out on the "I Lost a Lot of Weight" publicity tour. Wait until you've dropped the maximum amount of weight you're ever going to drop. Kirstie looks better than she did, but she's still got four or five additional Nicole Ritchie's to lose if she's going to get back to actual attractivity. (She's already kind of old for that also, but let's overlook that unfortunate reality for the purposes of argument.)

And what's with Oprah's condescending bullshit? "Beautiful! You look beautiful!" If she said it once, I'd think, "okay, maybe Oprah genuinely thinks Kirstie Alley in her present form looks attractive. We must just differ on this point." But she says it about 10 times in the course of 2 minutes, which of course means that it's bullshit.

Think about when you give someone a present. If they open it and say, "Hey, a collection of religious-themed snow globes! I love it!" once, you might think you've done a good job of picking out a gift. But if they say it over and over again, it means they're covering just how much they hated your present, and by extension, you.

"Oh, wow, great. Snow globes. This is great. I love them! I'll use them all the time! Any time I want to see Jesus and some children frolicking in the artificial plastic snow! That's great! I know a million places I can use these! Hey, great gift, man! I really like them."

That's Oprah when Kirstie Alley drops her robe and shows off her new line of chunky girls' summerwear. "Oh, wow, you're not morbidly obese any more! Terrific! That's really beautiful, I guess, in a totally non-sexual way. Good for you!"

(And before anyone who knows me personally feels the need to show up and point it out...I'm aware of the conflict of making fun of the overweight when I, myself, am overweight. No one wants to see me parade around television in skintight, revealing swimwear either. The difference is, I have the good sense not to do so.)