Next Year is This Year
Normally I don’t watch the Sunday morning news shows. They’re full of talking heads making spectacularly inaccurate predictions and discussing what to do about problems that they themselves had a hand in creating. It’s as big a waste of time as watching the NFL countdown. What would it be like to have a job where almost everything you said was obsolete or proven just down right wrong by the end of the day?
This past Sunday, though, I turned on the local news to get the weather and then left the TV on in the background while I was working on something else. The next time I looked up, it was Meet the Press and the featured guest was Vice President Dick Cheney. My first instinct was to turn the channel as quickly as possible but Cheney’s always had a certain sinister fascination to me. It’s like watching a rattlesnake go after a gopher; you know it’s going to turn out badly for the little critter but you can’t turn away. Then Cheney opened his mouth and one of the first things that he said had me cracking up. I wouldn’t have thought it possible; I don’t usually find anything even remotely funny about the man.
“Saddam Hussein was into self deception in a major way,” Dick Cheney
This is from the man who was outraged that the New York Times saw fit to disclose the fact of his illegal surveillance of the American public, and who still doesn’t think that waterboarding is torture. Damn pesky free press always messing up a good fascist operation. This is also the guy who says that he had nothing to do with the fact that Halliburton, the company that he once ran, has received more than TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS, our tax dollars mind you, worth of contracts for services rendered in a country that Cheney and his administration invaded on false pretenses. Who’s into self deception, Dick?
Happy New Year everyone. Only a few short weeks until this pompous ass is remanded off the stage, a nightmare consigned to our collective pasts. Do I think that the incoming Obama administration is going to wave a magic wand and solve all the nation’s ills? Of course not. But just about anything has got to be better than what we have now. So if you have a little of your champagne lying around, fill your glass and let’s raise a toast to the fact that Cheney and Company will soon be history.
Another thing that the New Year brings is one more chance for the Cubs to blow their season in some spectacular fashion. We’re a sadistic bunch, we Cubs fans; the fruitless years go by and still we believe. Some solace can be taken by knowing that you’re not the only idiot so afflicted. The Loveable Losers Literary Review is a group of Cubs loyalists who gathered each month during this past season at a local watering hole to share in our collective misery. The group consists of authors and artists of various pedigrees who put together a variety show of sorts whose theme was all things Cubbie. Alcohol was often involved; these are the Cubs we were fêting. And although the Cubs went down to LA in three straight this fall – after cruising through the regular season with the best record in baseball – the Loveable Losers refuse to similarly fade away. Editor Donald Evans pressed the group for contributions and then cobbled together an anthology that pays homage to our Northside team. There are stories, essays, comics and poems. It’s a lot of fun. I even have a small piece in there. You can buy it here: Cubbie Blues; the perfect gift for the cockeyed optimist in your dugout.
Writers are optimists. You have to be; the competition is vicious, the odds of success are ridiculous, the demands of time and solitude can be overwhelming. But you trudge on because there isn’t any choice; I write because it’s the only thing I can really imagine doing, plus I’m a lousy painter and only a marginal musician. The optimist in me sees every new year as a chance for a new beginning; the slate is wiped clean and you can start things over again. Whether it’s clearing Cheney’s fox out of the henhouse or hoping for a winning season for the Cubs the New Year offers us one more shot at getting it right.
Do you feel you went too far, Mr. Vice
President?
Absolutely Not
— Ric Hess, Jan 5, 05:30 PM
