Occasionally, if life deals you a tremendous amount of luck, and you use it wisely, you may find yourself in a position where quite a lot of people think you’re awesome. If such a fate crosses your path, it will be exciting and stimulating and quite possibly intoxicating. This is the time to proceed with the utmost caution, as all that greatness can collapse down upon you overnight. Case in point: Caroline Kennedy.

A year ago, Caroline Kennedy was mostly known for being the last surviving child of President John F. Kennedy, and also for some charity work that no one really paid attention to. Then, on January 27, 2008, Caroline wrote an Op-Ed column for the New York Times, entitled, “A President Like My Father,” which immediately jolted her back into the public consciousness. The column (and remember, this was in the thick of the Clinton vs. Obama primaries) compared Obama’s ability to inspire to that of JFK’s:

“Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.”

Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama is widely believed to have been the deciding factor in the decision of her formidable uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, to endorse Obama over Clinton. Suddenly, Obama fans everywhere loved her. She was a cheering representative from one of the Democratic party’s most influential families, and she was here to help. Clinton fans were predictably angry, but they were angry about so many things that month that it was hard to keep track.

After winning the primaries, Obama appointed Kennedy to his Vice Presidential selection committee, where she helped choose Joe Biden. She attended conventions and fundraisers and smiled and reminded us of her groovy dad. Camelot’s princess could do no wrong. We all thought she was a cool person, and we all respected her opinion.

This is the exact moment when she should have fucking quit. She’d helped out; our guy had won. After Obama’s victory in November, Caroline could have nodded, said, “my work here is done,” and gone back to saving orphans or playing polo or whatever it is she was doing. Instead, she decided to see how far she could push her luck.

You probably know the rest of the story by now. Obama picked Senator Clinton to be his Secretary of State, which meant that New York Governor Paterson had to find her replacement. Giddy from Obamania, Kennedy decided that she, too, wanted to give official politics a try, and announced her interest in Clinton’s Senate seat. And the love train derailed. Kennedy conducted a television interview which, while not as moronic as any of Sarah Palin’s interviews, nevertheless brought up frightening comparisons with Alaska’s Greatest Monster. Soon arguments about sexism, privilege, entitlement, and qualification filled the airwaves, and finally, last Thursday, Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration “for personal reasons.” Probably out of sheer embarrassment. At the end of this debacle, a woman who was viewed as almost universally groovy was a beaten display of failed hubris. In other words, she failed to quit while she was awesome.

Let me try to illustrate this with a couple of sports analogies. Remember back in 1993, when Michael Jordan was the King of Basketball? He was indestructible; widely considered to be one of the best players ever. When he retired in ‘93, he could have left it at that, and spent the rest of his life doing Hanes underwear commercials. But then he decided that he wanted to play professional baseball instead. Which did not go well. He returned to the NBA in 1995, and managed to kick ass with the Chicago Bulls for three more years before retiring for a second time in 1999. Even then, Jordan could have retired with his legacy intact. But, no, he had to make another comeback in 2001, for the Washington Wizards ferchrissakes, and it all became something of an embarrassment. He retired for the final time in 2003, still beloved, but not half as perfect as he had been ten years earlier.

Or, more recently, consider Brett Favre, long-time quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. After leading Green Bay through fifteen years of excellent football, Favre announced his retirement at the end of the ‘07 season. He was all set to go down in history as a legend, both in Wisconsin and football in general. Sadly, a few months later, he decided he didn’t want to be retired after all, and joined the New York Jets, who kind of sucked this year. Favre, too, had his moment, and decided to pee all over it.

My point is, if Kennedy, Jordan, and Favre had stuck to going out on a positive note and picked up a nice quiet hobby like bird watching or playing World of Warcraft, they would have virtually flawless Wikipedia entries. Instead, their biographies drag on until they become depressing. Let this be a lesson, people.

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

- President Barack Obama

“So, um, everything turned out alright, then? No backsies?”

- Horatio, via Twitter

Did you know that the President-Elect becomes President at 12:00 PM Eastern time on January 20th, whether or not he or she has taken the oath of office yet? I suppose I must have heard that somewhere — we had to learn about the Constitution in school, after all — but I’d never given it much thought.

CNN gave it some thought. Wolf Blitzer mentioned that little factoid more times than I could count. In the hour leading up to noon, and then for about five minutes afterward, it was all we heard. For Wolf Blitzer, Barack Obama could not become President soon enough. I’d never heard this fact mentioned during previous presidential inaugurations, but we’ve never had a President who so desperately needed to get the fuck out of Washington.

Obama’s speech will be replayed on TV and the internet for the next week, at least, and there won’t be all that much to analyze. It wasn’t the cheeriest speech I’ve ever heard, but it was direct, and honest, and even harsh at times. America is backed into one hell of a corner, and Obama’s speech acknowledged how much work it will take to get us out. I linked the full text above, and I don’t feel the need to dissect it right now.

When George W. Bush took the oath of office in 2001, I was a friendless virgin living in a college dormitory. Those personal problems were remedied within a year of Bush’s swearing-in, but that’s really the only positive thing that I remember happening during his first term. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was awakened by a ringing phone. My sister was on the other end of the line, screaming about something — something about terrorists and bombs and the Pentagon and a plane crash outside my adopted hometown of Pittsburgh. I calmed her down, barely, and turned on the TV just in time to see the first tower fall.

My then-girlfriend and I sat on the couch, occasionally attempting to cling to each other, but mostly numb and terrified. Eventually we decided to put on our coats and venture out into the city, just to make sure the world still existed. It did. The people I spoke to were all in varying states of shock. Everyone was putting up American flags, and I was genuinely moved by the gesture. Over the next few weeks, I began to feel a cautious optimism; as terrible as these attacks were, perhaps America would finally begin acting as one part of the world, rather than its would-be ruler.

George Bush had other ideas. His belief in American exceptionalism and his strange understanding of Executive power influenced virtually all of his policies, and sort of resulted in the exact opposite of what I had hoped for. Illogical wars were declared, science was thrown out when it became politically inconvenient, and medieval nastiness made a comeback. Reagan’s economic dreams were realized and promptly refuted, and the Bush administration stuck with them anyway. For a brief, shameful period, the Congressional cafeteria served “Freedom Fries.”

Now it’s over. We have a new President, who ran more against his predecessor’s policies than those of his opponent, and was elected on a platform change. Chances are, at least some of the promised changes will come about, because the people in Congress want them just as badly as their constituents. But I still can’t quite believe it. I still fear that Dick Cheney will jump out from behind my sofa and tell me that Obama has been kicked out of office on some weird technicality, and that I can go fuck myself.

That hasn’t happened. Dick Cheney doesn’t even have a key to my apartment. When the promised changes start happening, I may even start to believe it. Until then, I am spraying poison behind the sofa, and propping a chair against my door.

In an interview conducted last week, Wolf Blitzer had the following bizarre exchange with Vice President Dick Cheney:

Blitzer: Why haven’t you been able to capture or kill bin Laden, or Ayman Zawahiri, the number two al Qaeda leader?

Cheney: Well, we’ve got a few days left yet, Wolf.

Blitzer: Something happening we should know about?

Cheney: Well, no.

It’s probably nothing, but it got me thinking: what if Dick Cheney had some amazing plan to blow all speculation about the Bush Administration’s legacy out of the water? Fuck going on chat shows and joking about finding WMDs, what if Cheney decided to blow our minds by blurting out all his secrets? Doesn’t he seem like the sort of shadowy ultra-informed bastard who could know just about anything at this point, from aliens to Nazi zombies to the current whereabouts of Yog-Sothoth? And more to the point, are we really supposed to believe that he doesn’t know where Osama is?

Much has been said in recent weeks regarding President Bush’s legacy, which, to date, is similar to the legacy left behind by a steaming pile of baboon shit left on the hood of a car on a sunny day. Last week, the White House released a book entitled, and no, I’m not joking, Highlights of Accomplishments and Results: The Administration of President George W. Bush, described by a Gawker review as, “detailing every misleading argument you will hear coming from Bush mouthpieces from now until the end of time.” This morning, to accompany that release, Bush held his so-called “Ultimate Exit Interview” press conference, which turned out to be mostly the same old narcissistic garbage.

But here’s the thing: we know Bush sucks, and his sucking is neither interesting nor any longer relevant. I don’t care about what he has to say, and I don’t want to know his secrets and confessions and protestations. But Dick Cheney is a whole other sack of bananas.

He’s the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history. He’s notoriously secretive. He’s fucking creepy. He shoots his buddies in the face, keeps man-sized safes in his office, and refuses to admit that his papers belong in the National Archives. What I’m saying is, if anyone in Washington has something amazing to hide, it’s Cheney. And I want to know what he knows, even if my glimpse into the Palantír reveals my location to the Ring Wraiths.

Look, at this point, I would not be terribly surprised if on January 19th, Dick Cheney called a press conference, walked out onto the White House lawn dragging Osama bin Laden, blindfolded, on a fucking leash, calmly pulled out a pistol, shot him in the head, watched him fall, walked up to the podium, announced, “You’re welcome, fuck you, I’m done,” turned back into a bat and flew out of our lives forever. That would be a fitting legacy for Vice President Cheney.

I’m just saying, we’ve got one more week before we officially shift into the Obamaverse, and weirdness is possible. Obviously the next week will likely pass by without incident, but, just in case the world is more magical than I give it credit for and Cheney does exactly that, or something equally mind-blowing, just remember who called it.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been commissioned to prepare a video for a time capsule meant to perfectly summarize the state of the United States economy in January 2009, and you’ve only got thirty seconds of tape to do it in. It sounds impossible, I know. And yet, for purely practical reasons, the New York State Lottery has managed to nail it. Perfectly. Behold:

Our cheerful Everyman mailroom worker demonstrates, with the flair and subtlety of a young Jimmy Stewart, that in our current society the wealth, power, and immunity from culpability continue to rest in the hands of a greedy and callous elite few. Yet the little guy can always smile with the hope of finding the absurdly improbable luck necessary to win a lottery jackpot. Best of all, lottery winners can become rich without sullying their integrity in the manner of the corporate executive swine. And hope is the most important thing we have. Because it’s the only thing we have left. Because those rich fuckers destroyed our economy. Now get off the couch, slap on a smile, and go do some gambling!

It’s the end of December 2008, which means that we’re still sweeping up the unsightly debris from one of the worst parties America’s ever thrown, also known as the Bush Administration. At this point we’ve made it all the way to the “walk of shame” portion of the party, and the media’s standing outside shoving microphones into the faces of everyone staggering out wearing mussed-up hair and a stranger’s T-shirt. This morning CBS caught up with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, notable for having attended all eight years of this dreadful event. They were curious, no doubt, to learn how she feels about it all. When did the good booze run out? How many of the guests got wasted and started fist fights? And what did she think of the party’s host?

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush’s low approval ratings, people will soon ’start to thank this president for what he’s done.’”

Yeah… wait, fuck, seriously? You’re serious about this? Your hypothesis is that soon, not only will we stop referring to George W. Bush as a childish, destructive, ignorant buffoon, but that we will actually start to thank him for all his hard work? Pardon my English, but, I don’t fucking think so.

Continuing the interview, Condi also said,

“…This president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time.”

Fucking stand the test of time? Which policies were those, exactly? The one about illegal civilian wire-tapping? The one about privatizing Social Security? The ones about cutting funding for scientific research into alternate energy whilst pushing to open up oil drilling on wildlife reserves?

If nothing else, this proves once and for all that Secretary Rice will never run for office, because she hasn’t jumped on the GOP’s new Bush-bashing bandwagon. Beyond that, though, I have to assume that this is just how Condoleezza keeps the Guilt Goblins out of her nightmares: by believing the bullshit so thoroughly that she’s actually taken to the “history will vindicate us” theory like scripture.

In a few weeks, Secretary Rice will go back to Stanford University in California, and teach and write books and get a good night’s sleep for the first time in eight or nine years. And you know, I don’t care about the books she’s going to write in 2009. I’m interested in the book she’s going to write in 2019, when she’s had a good decade to process everything that’s happened, and the ensuing aftermath. That will be an interesting read. She wants to see how history judges all this shit? Well, so do I.

I’ve long had an aversion to big family holidays. It has little to do with my actual family; they can be irritating at times, but it’s nothing worth getting estranged over. However, they all live far enough away that I have to deal with airports, and none of them live anywhere warm. As such, the holidays force me to spend my time and money making my way through winter traffic in at least two cities, and usually three or four, depending on how many people we’re visiting that year. It doesn’t help that, as non-religious as they are for the rest of the year, the holidays bring out the urge to start praying at every fucking opportunity, while I stand there hoping nobody notices I’m not really into it.

So this year, I took the holidays off. The whole season, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, is going to be free of travel, gift-giving, and Jesus-based silliness. And I must say, so far, it’s been quite pleasant. There’s nobody to wake me up at 5:00 AM because we need to drive to Michigan to see relatives, nobody to tell me stories about other people’s kids, nobody to make me stop watching Ralphie because it’s time to open presents.

I suppose there should be a lesson in here somewhere. I should learn that spending Christmas alone is actually sad and horrible, and that the only thing that kept this holiday from completely sucking was the love of my family. But the fact is, I haven’t had to listen to “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” even once this year. (Please note, that cartoon is not by me.) I control the music! And the TV! And the PlayStation, even though I wasn’t really going to use it today. The point is, I could.

I get to cook food that I like, instead of the unevenly-heated ham that has become a family tradition. I don’t have to hear my uncle’s upsettingly graphic questions about my sex life. I get to blow off writing the second half of my Rick Warren rant until at least the 26th (that one isn’t really related to Christmas, but it’s still something I’m happy about). And I don’t have to worry about fitting a bunch of new books and sweaters into my suitcase for the trip home.

For most people, our holidays and vacations require us to face more obligations, more deadlines, and more stress than our normal lives. The fact is, if Christmas was more convenient, I wouldn’t hesitate to join in the celebration. If I lived a bit closer to my family, or if the atmosphere was a bit more welcoming, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to skip the holiday. Hell, if we just postponed Christmas to May, when we could be promised slightly more forgiving weather, that would be good enough for me.

Until I can convince the entire world to reschedule the year’s biggest holiday, though, we’ll have to make do with taking a year off every now and then. Happy Holidays, and good luck getting that fucking hippo song out of your heads.