huda kazi in the big city

Driving home from taraweeh tonight, I heard on the radio a commercial featuring John Smoltz shilling for Southern Linc cell phone service (why, John, why?). Apparently John uses his Southern Linc everywhere, but not in the movie theater, and if he catches somebody using a cell in a movie theater, he throws candy at them at 96 mph.

Hey, it made ME laugh.

Okay, so I know the Daily Mirror is more a tabloid than not, that they spend the bulk of their press coverage on whichever royal happens to be publicly imploding at the moment, but there’s little that compares to sardonic British humor. To wit:

Thanks to Kate for finding me a screenshot!

Breakups according to the Gilmore Girls mean wallowing, sitting around the house in your pajamas watching TV, eating ice cream and pizza, and just generally feeling badly.

It’s what I did today — minus the ice cream and pizza of course — as I tried to come to terms with the election and who won and who didn’t. (I broke my fast with a date and half a pint of Moose Tracks ice cream, for what it’s worth.)

I came home from election coverage around 4:30, and then I sat up and watched more returns for a bit while I ate my Ramadan sehri, finally going to sleep around 6 a.m. I woke up just as John Kerry was announcing his concession to George W. Bush, and then I spent the rest of the day wallowing with the best of them.

I am still so sad and so angry, especially when I remember my excitement yesterday morning while I stood in line to vote, thinking we were going to change things for the better on November 2, 2004. And I am still very scared about where our country is headed and whether that place will welcome me and mine.

But.

I have processed now. I’ve read some amazing words, including Kerry’s concession speech, Sars’s response to a Vine letter, and Pineapple Girl’s election response, and I am ready to function again because, as Sars says so well, it’s not over. Not by a long shot. Bush may have won the election, but this is still a county of and by the people, and if the president wants to erode our liberties and destroy our ideals, he’s going to have to fight us every step of the way.

I am not optimistic or hopeful about the next four years. What I am is determined, determined to force change in 2006 and again in 2008. We have been given time, people, to do something. To change the electoral process so all of a state’s electoral votes don’t go to whichever candidate manages to scrape up 51 percent of the vote. To counteract the Republican propoganda that “liberal” is a dirty word. To convince our friends and neighbors to care and to do something as well.

It starts here, and it starts now. Let’s get on it.

None.

After all, what is there to say? We have doomed ourselves to war, the ravaging of the environment, the reduction of civil liberties, and (as AM pointed out) the re-dawning of the age of McCarthyism. So you’ll excuse me if I am not exactly rejoicing.