Pass the Prozac

Carla RheaI can forgive them for the deficit (who hasn't taken the rent money to Vegas?), and I can forgive them for Iraq. I mean, really: let he among us who hasn't gone on a testosterone rampage and invaded another country and bombed the shit out of its women and children once in a while cast the first stone. This one at least had that superfun Information Minister; it's not like we invaded Grenada.

But it's just cruel to make me think I'm crazy.

You know what they always say: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not stealing the election. Those CBS/New York Times polls showing W. 10 points ahead? One of the questions in the poll's internals asked, “Who did you vote for in the last election?” The respondents went for George W. Bush with 36 percent and gave Al Gore 28. See, the problem with that is that isn't how people voted in 2000. It's what we in the biz call not representative and total cock. It was actually pretty close, so close the Supreme Court had to step in some five weeks later. Perhaps you remember a little something about that? Maybe you are a pundit and went on the teevee, wailing for “closure,” as in, “It doesn't matter who got the most votes—what we need as a country is closure“? God damn, you people sounded like Oprah—except Oprah would never be stupid enough to fall for that one, and also, she never whines. She's a sophisticated mama. Oh, my disco lady.

Or maybe you were there when Miami-Dade wanted to have a hand count as required by the Florida state constitution, but then you and your fellow Republican staffers showed up and started rioting in the halls and banging on the windows and howling like, oh, something really threatening? Like Huns, maybe? Or some nun-raping Contras? Oh, no, I've got it: like the concerned citizens of Kristallnacht! And the little old ladies and man of the Miami-Dade elections board miraculously changed their minds and stopped the counting? That's right: democracy with a capital K.

Yes I called you Hitler.

So where I was I? Oh, yes: CBS and The New York Times. So now that you've made me completely insane, I'm a-thinking these outlying polls (all the rest but Gallup show Bush with a one-point, not 10-point, lead) are to prep us for the duplicate Diebold results. Stuart Pfeifer had a story about some lawsuits in the LA Times; it seems if you have the secret two-digit code for your Diebold touch-screen voting machine (or as I like to call it, Hal 9000), you can make a fake set of results on your computer doohickey (that's the technical term for it) and forward that on to the registrar, and the people, they are suing! The funny thing was Stu didn't put the reason for the lawsuits until the ninth paragraph of his story. That's what we in the biz call “burying the lede” after binding it and gagging it and stuffing it in the trunk.

Now what have I done with my tinfoil hat?

I'm not usually a sniveling wreck, but I've been suffering this low-grade depression: my son's feeling successful in school this quarter, and I have a very nice dog, and that's pretty much it in the realm of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens for 2004. First, there's my upcoming eviction so my landlords can quintuple (that means times five!) their $100 grand investment in the house they bought 10 years ago. I bet land's cheap on the Gulf Coast about now; do you think they've got a Weekly? Second, I made the rookie mistake of sitting around and eating Fluffernutter while rereading a diary where I had five boyfriends at once (and I loved them all!), which punched me in the throat with the revelation that I won't be 20 again—not even a little! And third, there's the niggling fact that after they steal the election, Karen Hughes will probably round up all us Jewy intellectuals and let the goodly folk of Saddleback tear us limb from limb like in The Lottery. Kooks scare me!

You know when you're in a low-grade depression and you run into someone and they ask how you are and you pause and give a little smile that doesn't reach your eyes, and you say, “Great!” and you look kind of weird and desperate and give off that bad stench of sad?

Try not to do that, okay?

So to cheer myself up, I put on some whore clothes (Commie Mom's most favorite vagina skirt and some really too-slutty shoes). It's hard to be depressed when you look like a whore!

However, it's still not impossible. I called up some girls. “Hey!” I said. “I'm dressed like a whore. Where should I go?”

Sutra!” said they. Of course! Off I trundled to Costa Mesa, getting very carefully out of my car so as not to make the valet's day, and walked right past the line of peeps (at 8:45 p.m.!) waiting to get into the club that brought neighboring Vegas to its arthritic knees. I used to be too humble to walk past a line of waiting persons. Fuck that.

Once inside, I was completely intimidated by the crowds of young Gatsbys and the misses who posed near them, long-limbed as colts. They were all so pretty, and so un-depressed. They talked to one another, and laughed and flipped their hair, and moved sinuously through the closely packed crowds. Pretty! A man bought me a drink, but then stirred it for me before he handed it over. Did his hand need to be over my glass so long? Doesn't he know I'm paranoid? I drank the drink anyway, roofie or no. He wasn't originally from Newport Beach, he said, and he didn't so much like it. “All the women only care what you drive and how much money you have,” he said, and I'm pretty sure he wanted me to ask for myself when he continued, “I got you the most expensive rum.” How very rich!

I hid on the patio, and a young lady was friendly as her friends looked away. “I love your dress!” said she, her backless, midriffless, strapless top stuck to her firm little self with false-eyelash glue. How sweet! “I mean, I couldn't get away with it, but you totally can! I love it! It's so . . . different! I do!” Sisterhood is powerful. And as I, deflated, slunk past the swollen line to get in on my walk of shame out, I remembered that it's not me! It's them! And I laughed and tossed my hair and sashayed away.

Psych! No I didn't.

Need more Little Mary Sunshine? CommieGirlCollective.com

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