Obama won. Yes he did. All my buddies over there on Daily Kos and HuffPo may rue the day they voted for a pragmatic Chicago pol for president and will keep drinking the Lieberman=The Anti-Christ kool-aid. (If they were so uneducated as to believe in Christ, let alone an anti-Christ. I’ll stop before the atheists among you–and trust me, you are in the majority here–get all hot and bothered by my latent fire and brimstone.)

By the way, I hear that kool aid is so refreshing. Like getting back on cigarettes after a relationship with a triathlete. (No, not talking from experience here, Tech Support Guy.)

So, Obama won and the world is safe for democracy again and I’m just a little bit BORED OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MYSELF? THIS IS JUST LIKE QUITTING SMOKING, BTW. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH MY HANDS!

Obviously, hair cut time, right? New look, new color, new me.

Except there’s nothing new going on up there except the end of a really pathetic clumping of hair at the back of my neck.

NOTHING NEW IS GOING ON, PEOPLE.

I know what you’re expecting to read next. It goes something like, “Kill me now.”

But I’d like to try a little something new today. How about, “I like my nice middle aged lady hair?” Wow. You weren’t expecting that, were you? I really do. What’s more, I’m holding onto this Anne Bancroft fantasy. Yes, hot rollers will be involved. And perhaps even fake eye lashes. But so far, I’m resisting the charms of my neighbor named Benjamin. (He’s six, after all. But his hair is very Dustin Hoffman, 1967.)

It’s the end of the election that lasted two years. I hated all the time I didn’t love it. It was the worst boyfriend I ever had and the best. I’m completely destroyed without it and supremely free. This is the first day of the rest of my life.

So what to do now?

Well, at least I have a new radio guy on the side. I’m cheating on everyone. His name is Matt Riley and right now he’s sitting in for Jay Trachtenberg. (This may be meaningless to those of you beyond the airwaves of KUT, but with the internets, KUT reaches everyone, so tune in people. If we’re going to keep on having newspapers even though they won’t be printed, we’ll still have radio even though I’ll be the only person with one on top of her fridge once my mom and grandmother are gone.)

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the return of yet another familiar stranger, one who hasn’t been seen in these parts for months if not years. It’s time to go back to the days when Prematurely Grey was young. The salad days. Let’s welcome back our old friend, SOTD.

Ten Years Gone. Led Zepplin.

Get the fucking Led out, people. That’s what we have to do in the post-election universe. Screw Joementum and angry Kossacks. Screw the Washington Establishment and private schools and tickets to the inauguration. Fuck it all.

It’s time to get the Led out. Period. Paragraph.

I applied for a job last week and I immediately went dark here at PG. How can anyone possibly give me a job if they read the crap that goes through my brain 24 hours a day? The paranoia kicks in immediately. (I’m pretty sure I would have aided the Nazis, given this level of spinelessness over a blog read by eight Dear Readers.)

Well, Morning Fucking Joe has a job, even though he doesn’t know better than to not repeat Jay Carney’s Rahn Emmanuel story word for fucking word. Rahm Emmanuel has a fucking job, even though he repeatedly stabbed a table in front of everyone he worked with. Fuck, even Sarah Palin has a job. If she has a job, there’s got to be a job out there for me.

The laptop’s back on the dining room table. (Sorry, TSG!) The sun is shining. KUT is blasting. Prematurely Grey is in the motherfucking house.

But in the midst of following the news out of Houston and making gumbo that tasted like etouffe, I started to have a very good feeling. Something’s shifting out there. Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s found a cure to the pox of Palinmania. First there was the startling revelation that 130,000 people have shared their reasons for thinking Sarah Palin is not qualified to be vice president. There’s a petition. And Eve Ensler. And (of course) every one is sending aroung Gloria Steinem’s piece in the LA TImes. People are beginning to take action. (They’re just not thinking about soap operas while they’re doing it.)

This morning was different. This morning, we knew how good Tina Fey is at Sarah Palin. She’s better at Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin is. If Tina Fey stepped in for Sarah Palin in the vice presidential debate, I’m pretty sure that she’d do a better job than Sarah Palin. First of all, she’s smarter. She can’t help but seem like she understands the question. Plus, it’s got to be impossible to blink/wink/tic as much as Sarah Palin does.  A normal person, even a trained actress, can’t pull it off. So, Tina Fey makes a more trustworthy Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin does. (But we do not wish Tina Fey the fate of bearing Todd Palin’s sixth child, Dank Palin. Girl.)

It was the news from Alaska that did it. I first heard about it from my old tried and true Daily Kos. Here’s the diary that launched a thousand emails:

Alaska Women Reject Sarah Palin Rally

Woohoo! So good that I emailed the link out to my dad and mother-in-law.

But to get an even better feel for the rally, well, it’s time for our buddy Mudflats. Her descriptive style, combined with the fact that she got to the rally after attending Palin’s actual rally in Anchorage, makes for great reading. Obviously, it was an amazing event for the people of Alaska. According to Mudflats, this was the biggest rally in the history of the state. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been in some pretty big marches. Pro-choice marches. The huge Si Se Puede march in Austin in May of 2006. The biggest was the Sane/Freeze march in New York in June 1982 (right after I graduated from the EUESGS–my mom forced my brother and me out of bed early on Saturday morning). One million people. One million people.

But if you watch the video Mudflats posted, you’ll know that this was just as huge an event. These people are thrilled to be together. They are thrilled to have the right to assemble. They are thrilled to find out that there are more than five or fifty or one hundred people who are willing to put on what would be deep winter clothing in Austin and gather along a library (hooray!) to register their rejection of their own governor. See for yourself:

Clip Number Four: In Which It Becomes Known that We Can No More Blame the Good People of Alaska for This Sorry State of Affairs than We Can the Good People of Texas for the One that Precedes (and Perhaps Precipitated) Our Current Situtation

You will note, as did I, no updo’s among the rabble rousers. Who needs a secret handshake when you’ve got a hairdo at your disposal?

Clip Number Three: In Which the Existence of an Evil Twin is Revealed (and Pheobe Tyler Makes Her First Appearance in the Story)

I’m a little worried about how Tina Fey must be feeling. Hey you Another World fans out there, are you sensing a little Vicky-Marley thing going on? And that would mean Anne Heche will soon be in the house. Then we’ll be in for a bit of TROUBLE.

Just got off the phone with my brother-in-law. The director, not the rapper. He’s always been the family outlier when it comes to politics (recently found notes from 1992 that describe his distrust of Clinton). He’s basically a Howard Stern Democrat (an under-appreciated demographic if ever there was one). Last month in Montana, we had a heated argument about the relative ignorance of people in what finally boiled down to Dixie. He pretty much embodied every reason to not trust a Yankee Democrat that I can fantasize going through the mind of a guy with the Stars and Bars on his truck/hat/bicep.

Anyway, this morning we talked about Sarah Palin’s impact on me as a mother. Seriously. Sarah Palin has already changed the way I’m raising my daughters. Thanks to Sarah Palin, I am thinking about what it means to be a mother in a whole new light. Obviously, there’s the possibility that some day I’ll be running for vice president. I need to increase the hotness and keep growing my hair. (I’ve already got the glasses and my shoes are clearly better than hers.)

But there are other ways that Sarah’s started to affect me. It’s the little things, like wondering, “Which of the Amy’s Organic frozen dinners would Sarah Palin buy for her children to eat while she’s out at the local Democratic party forum on women’s issues that will include the now infamous paper ‘Forced Childbirth=Slavery’?” Or, while sitting in the middle school library for a parent meeting on homework and your child, considering just how much more room there would be on the shelves if Sarah Palin could go through the collection and remove all the offending books.

Now, when faced with one of those tricky mom moments, when I have to make a decision that might influence exacly what kind of people my daughters grow up to be, I have a wonderful new parenting tool. I simply ask myself:

What Would Sarah Palin Do?

I’ll share a couple of What Would Sarah Palin Do moments, so you can see for yourself the way that she’s already become an important influence on me.

First, there’s the video store last Friday. Tech Support Guy was out of town, so I was there alone with the girls. We had settled on Be Kind, Rewind, but when the video store guys went to get the actual DVD, it wasn’t there. We had to come up with another video. Any mother of two of more children will recognize this as a potentially disastrous moment. You had an accord. It was about to be ratified. And then someone say, “No, this won’t do. Palestine, Israel, go back to your people and tell them that this accord is shit.”

Well, every time we go to the video store, someone suggests that we rent Animal House. And I say no. The suggestion comes because their father got to see Animal House for his 10th birthday. And I cite this event to prove that my childhood in divorced 1970s Studio 54 New York was more moral than his Leave It To Beaver upbringing (if Beaver’s parents were a Upper West Side Russian Jew  and a Bronx-born Italian Red Diaper Baby in the movie business). No one took me to see Animal House at 10.

Last Friday was the 31st anniversary of Tech Support Guy’s 10th birthday. He was in Toronto seeing cool movies. I was at Vulcan Video (next to the newly expanded Dreams Adult Video Emporium conveniently located just blocks from UT) facing the complete breakdown in negotiations. Palestine was looking pretty pissed. And Israel had just thrown out, “Mom, how about Animal House?”

What Would Sarah Palin Do?

Would Sarah Palin let her children be spoiled by seeing this movie? Would she permit them this glimpse into pre-Reagan America, where sex was funny and everyone wanted to have it? Even the girls?

No, Sarah Palin probably believes that Animal House is inappropriate for kids.

So, we rented Animal House.

And then yesterday, when it looked like Hurricane Ike was headed straight for Austin, I realized that we were scheduled to have a house full of seventh grade girls on a day with 50 mph winds. Pick up might be a problem.

What Would Sarah Palin Do?

The answer came instantly: Let them have sex and marry their boyfriends.

So, I’m not going to let them have sex and marry their boyfriends. Problem solved. The sleepover’s going to be fine, since I’m pretty sure no one’s going to get pregnant. (Now Ike is headed away from the ATX and much closer to Houston. The dance is cancelled, so I have no idea of where we’re headed with this sleepover, but I’ll keep you posted about any late breaking WWSPD situations.)

The years of self-doubt are over. My daughters saw Animal House. If they’re lucky, they’ll grow up to be as smart and levelheaded and funny as their dad. They’ll know that going to college is the goal and that anything short of that is going to be a serious fucking problem. (And that no matter how much they love their boyfriend, he’s not going to be on stage when I give my acceptance speech.)

Next movie on the list: The original Bad News Bears. I’m not interested in raising daughters who don’t think Tanner is a comic genius. And if you don’t agree with me, too fucking bad.