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.

Democrats on the move in Texas? Check

Democrat in the White House? Check

Democrat representing me in Congress? (Well, you can’t have everything–where would you put it?)

Frankly, I’ve been preparing to hang up the superpowers for good. Not only does democracy seem to be on the upswing, I can’t afford the shoes in the Current Economic Climate and the Ongoing Middle Age Identity Crisis has me paralyzed, hair-wise.

I came home from the second 7:30 am middle school parent meeting of the week (yes, everything you think that is wrong with that phrase is indeed wrong with that phrase) gearing up to announce my retirement. Before getting on with the Great Announcement, I thought I’d unwind with a little Cafe Vienna moment courtesy of MSNBC. Just a smidge of MSNBC. Not a full Morning Fucking Joe rewind–no need to get involved in Transition to the White House–Obamanation or Abomination! this morning. Time to grow up, move on, knit some hats.

And BOOM there she was! WWSPD on November 13, 2008? Of couse, she’d speak at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami. But why should that bother me? She can’t hurt me anymore.

It bothers me because standing on her right is none other than GOVERNOR GOODHAIR, MR. 39%, TEXAS’ OWN RICK PERRY!

But that alone was not enough to drag me back to the WordPress window. No, I can resist Rick Perry and the thought of the 2010 Texas governor’s race and the likelihood that Rapunzel Sarah will come to the Lone Star State and stump for this chump. I can even bear the thought that I will end up “rooting” for Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Republican primary so I can see Sarah repudiated by good Texas Republican women.

So why I am back ringing the alarm? Grandma made me do it.

People of Austin! People of Texas! People of America! Prepare! Repent! End times are upon us!

One Tough Grandma is running for mayor of Austin. This spring. As in, starting today, Carole Blahbedy Blah Blah Blah Something wants you to return her to the mayor’s office.

Could Kinky be far behind?

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

Started my normal cruise through the sites I read (Times, Talking Point Memo, First Read) and decided to check out FiveThirtyEight a little earlier than normal. Clicked through on the “Road to 270: Arizona” (even though I really don’t give a shit about Arizona) and HOLY SHIT!!! WHAT ARE MY SHOES DOING ON 538?!

I kid you not. I own those shoes. I not only own those shoes, I wear those shoes. I wore them throughout the convention (tucked flip flops in the big red bag for walking). I wore them them Monday night to the couple of local Dem events I attended with yet another man named Joe. (Evening Joe? Joe the Lawyer? New Mexico Joe? That’s it–New Mexico Joe.)

Could it be that I own and wear the iconic (to the point of being a CafePress t-shirt joke) Obama Mama pumps?

So far, I haven’t seen anybody else in these shoes. In fact, I tried to find them on Zappos and after scrolling through 15 pages of Donald Pliner shoes all I could find for you to see was the slingback version:

Ladies and gentlemen, I could have purchased the slingbacks. They were there at my local shoe dealer (and I use that word purposefully). But I chose the pump. Pumps, yes.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Superpowers have migrated downward.

I haven’t had a haircut since before the convention. Frankly, it’s been the source of  great confusion and concern. True confession: I’m growing my hair out right now. And given the fact that my haircuts are intimately connected to the fate of one Tom DeLay, enemy of the people, friend of casino gambling, I’ve been questioning whether I’m doing everything I can to save democracy.

But this is a new election! Tommt D, we are five seats away from taking back the Texas House. Obama Deputy National Campaign Director Steve Hildebrand promoted this fact to a roomful of national political bloggers in July. (I was there and I nearly cried.) This fall, I’m not just whistling Dixie. (I have been waiting to type that for years.) We are five seats away. Five seats.

If we win back the Texas House, the 2010 Texas House redistricting might redraw the seats Tommy L. and his buddy Midland Tom drew up so Democrats would never hold power again in the Lone Star State. (How could it be that Texas Democrats keep winning, Toms?). And if we redraw those seats and a few more actual representatives of the people are elected in 2012, well, we might be able to redraw those Congressional districts. And if we redraw those Congressional districts, well, Austin might have a representative in Congress, come January 2014.

OK, I’m not going to buy new boots. I’m not going to buy new shoes. And it’s not just because of WWSPD. I’m going to give the money I would have spent on shoes on the Travis County Democratic Party.

And for those of you who might be concerned about my outfit tomorrow, I think I’ll wear my mom’s 1973 black suede Bendel’s peep toes. I’d like to see Sarah whip out her mom’s shoes from fourth grade and rock them at her next fundraiser. Come on, Sarah, I dare you.

Remember when the worst thing about Sarah Palin was how dumb she seemed? Like back in these days, when it seemed like she just wanted to use her God-given talents to do the best for herself (and therefore our nation and humankind, because she’s got something of a Trinity complex going, no?)?

Those were such good times.

The days when the thing I hated about her was her complete rebuke to feminism and my religion and my hopes for my daughters’ futures.

Wow. I wish those days could have lasted forever.

I really miss the old up-do Sarah, who winked and smiled and practically giggled with joy even though her teenage daughter was pregnant and everyone thought that she was really just covering about baby Trig and that Trig was Bristol’s baby.

Because Repunzel Palin scares the living crap out of me. I fully expect her to poison Grandpa McAngrypants now that he’s acting a little bit like his old self.

Finally, I have to admit it. Clearly, Sarah Palin has superpowers. And letting the hair down unleashed the demons of hell. Can somebody please get that up-do back? Before it’s too late?

(And at some point, we’re going to have to deal with Todd…)

But in what has to be a truly unexpected development, I’ve developed concurrent borderline obsessions with two additional guys. This morning, as I lay around reading every fucking thing I could find about the debate that didn’t make me want to kill the writer and skimming through (can you skim TV? film scholars out there, will you please weigh in?) Morning Joe (kind of like sipping on NyQuil–not good, but not the worst thing I could be doing–well, OK, really really bad), both of them popped up yet again, in what has to be their best form yet. So the time has come for me to introduce all of you to the two of them.

Instead of explaining all the reasons I love these guys, I’m going to keep it simple. Here’s what Bachelor Number One did this morning, (Well, he did it last night; I found out this morning, courtesy of, choking here, the fucking HuffPo, which I HATE for keeping me up with what Paul Reiser thinks of our current situation.):

Robert Gibbs is in the MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE! Preppy boys will in fact inherit the earth. Proof right here, ladies and gentlemen. (And, for the record, Gibbs is the one who compared Lindsey Graham to Niedermeyer on Morning Joe during the Republican Convention[killed!], laying the groundwork for me to show my daughters Animal House in honor of their father’s 41st birthday and thus ensuring that our republic will go down in flames just because of Sarah Palin.)

Meanwhile, over in the land of the written word, I’ve become completely obsessed with the NYTimes coverage of Meltdown 2008–THE FIRESTORM IN THE FINANCIALS. And by completely obsessed, I mean reading every word written by Paul Krugman. Now let’s be honest: no one slept with Krugman in college. No one. So the idea that I’m following this guy’s every word is, well, unexpected. But over the past two weeks, the Princeton Econ Department has skyrocketed in the Bizarrely Sexy Index and I’m reliving Econ 101 (first experienced in Fall 1982, with none other than Big Man on Campus Alan Blinder at the lectern, boring the shit out of me and 500 other stupid freshmen in Alexander Hall weekly). But Krugman, shit. Let’s face it, I’ve hated the guy all year because he’s been in the tank for Hillary. He’s done nothing but give Obama shit. And he’s the kind of wonky tech weenie who appeals to Tech Support Guy (he buys his books), not a hotshot historian (oxymoron?) for a backseat driver like me.

Well, there’s more to Krugman than meets the eye.

Just trust me here. Read this little post and then follow his link. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

So I was pleased to see that Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund have an ad that’s being promoted on Daily Kos right now. Frankly, it’s brutal. It shows aerial hunting. And it pretty much stages a reenactment of Sarah Palin shooting a wolf from a low flying plane. (I guess that makes it another installment in WWSPD. WWSPD? Shoot a wolf from a low flying airplane. What would I do? Not shoot a wolf. Hey, I probably wouldn’t get in that fucking plane.)

But for those of you who hate Sarah Palin, it’s must see TV.

Here’s to C. for fighting the good fight long before any of us were trying to shake the image of Sarah Palin in a Wonder Woman bikini, complete with AK-47 (I’m right about that, right. Any gun enthusiasts out there want to help me out here?), from our minds’ eyes. Here’s to the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund for raising all that money for all those years so the people of Ohio could feel nauseous while just trying to unwind after a long day endless political advertising. And here’s to the the EUESGS for educating C. to become the kind of person who devotes her life to defending wildlife (and me to become the kind who can link to it).

Here’s a link to the Daily Kos diary. Beware: Daily Kos is like going to the opera. There are a lot of divas over there and the fat lady is constantly singing.

*I read C.’s first email while sitting in the Denver airport waiting for my plane on Friday evening. It was the second indication that Palinmania was going to be bad. The first was the woman on the tram who told me, unsolicited, that Sarah Palin was a bad mother. She then proceeded to tell me that no woman should put her career before her children. She had three children. She’d turned down a job with Andrew Young. She was going home to Chicago. Early 60s. African American. All this in a three minute tram ride.

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.