Now and tonight

And so, with a pronouncement from the Cable News Network and a series of pints of Dead Guy Ale, our long national nightmare is over. It's Obama and, assuming we can prevent him from getting shot for 75 days, the end of the third or fourth most ridiculous passage of American history.

In spite of the fact that a victory I once thought fantastic has become real, I don't feel much but tired, afraid and buzzed. Tired, because if this is what a 21st Century presidential election is, how ever will we as a nation sustain another one, let alone 100 more?

Afraid, because Barack Obama will not be able to heal the entire planet within four (or even eight) years and when he fails, I believe that about half of the country will chain him to a Jesus complex no one other than his opponent professed and vote against him as the rabid liberal he never was. And buzzed because Sarah showed up at my apartment three sheets to the wind with a six pack just as I arrived home from professionally pretending that I think Rep. Dean Heller can adequately represent a junior high school volleyball team, let alone the state of Nevada.

But now. Tonight. Now and tonight, prospects are good. I've acquired a small pile of phone numbers over the past week, I have tomorrow off and Elizabeth Dole has gone down in ignominious defeat. After a decade or so, things may in fact may have just taken a nice bounce for the 28-year-old reporters of the world and I do believe that I'll have myself another drink and raise it to the first African American president of the United States.