Thursday, January 15, 2009

Inauguration Blues

Well, to turn to a subject other than spam (and that is very difficult, as you can imagine), I'd like to touch on something more serious for a moment: the impending inauguration of our (*checks references*) 44th president. Yes, I just spent a lot of time setting up a Barack Obama Book Club display in the rotunda of my library. Yes, people seem really enthusiastic, and I'm willing to help them by trying to figure out how to get a TV or steaming internet version of the inauguration for them to see, especially if they don't have a TV at home or can't watch for some other reason (like they're in the library to work on their resume because they lost their job). However, after receiving numerous holiday cards and letters in which people celebrated the aura of change and "yay! January 20th" and basically oozed hope out of their cheery family photos, I'm getting really tired of all this hoopla (especially considering I didn't even vote for him). In addition, "inauguration" is a difficult word to spell! Yes, maybe things will be Different after Jan. 20th, and maybe they won't--I'm going to reserve judgment. I'm sure there were people somewhere who voted for G.W. Bush in 2000 who thought he was going to be a force for change, and clean up Washington after that nasty Clinton administration (which is now reincarnated by the not at all radical Obama picks). History will be our judge, as usual. In the meantime, I hope that all the people driving or flying to DC have a wonderful time, there are no international incidents, and we can get this whole mess over with and move on with our recession and endless wars and overall gloomy future.