“groovy mother...”

Goofy Goober Rock

Currently rawking my headphones: The Spongebob Squarepants Movie Soundtrack. Quality, quality stuff. Much like the old Powerpuff Girls CD, it’s got a bunch of excellent indie artistes such as The Flaming Lips, Electrocute, The Shins and.. er.. Motorhead. Highly recommended.

So… did I miss anything?

I was in St Louis this last week on business, so haven’t really had a chance to post my reaction to the election. (Let’s just say my plan to put up a second entry titled “Unfuckingbelievable” with a screengrab of the ‘Kerry Wins’ headline from boston.com didn’t quite pan out).

Much has already been said, so I’ll just add this perspective: The British general election of 1992 was the first election night when I stayed up to watch the results.

I watched the exit-poll predictions of a Hung Parliament (no single party gaining a majority) turn into John Major’s Conservative government getting re-elected. After 13 years of Conservative governments—the reign of Thatcher, the disastereous implementation then speedy reversal of the Poll Tax, the pointlessness of the Falklands War, the shagging backbenchers—the electorate turned round, said “More Please!” and voted them back into office.

I remember a month later, Spitting Image captured it fantastically, closing their series with a hippie protest song entitled “The Times, They Aren’t A-Changing”.

The Cabinet: Now look to the future, and what do you see?
John Major: I’ll be here for ten years
Michael Heseltine: Then ten years of me.
Norman Lamont: You’ll still think I’m rubbish
The Cabinet: And we’ll all agree.
For the times, they aren’t a-changing.

But in the end, Labour swung around, voted a smooth (Rupert Murdoch approved) prettyboy to lead the party, and their landslide victory in the 1997 election was all the sweeter. The delight of seeing Mellor, Portillo, Rifkind, Forsyth and all the other Tory scum lose their seats was one of the sweetest nights of my life.

Of course, Tony Blair turned round a year later and abolished the free university education. And then supported Bush in the Iraq war. Which kind-of cancels out most of the good.

So really, the fact is: It doesn’t matter too much who wins. All politicians suck. But man, do some suck more than others. And for the next four years, the White House is going to be the Dyson vacuum cleaner of the western world.

But let’s see how the next election night turns out.