Holy Crap — Everything Still Sucks, Doesn't It?

So I’ve been back in the US for nearly a week, but until tonight I’ve not felt inspired to rededicate myself to this blog. Part of this, I’m sure, can by explained by the decisive lack of wingnuttery to be endured on a Princess Cruise to the Mediterranean (a vacation about which I shall have more to say shortly). Satellite television on the ship consisted mainly of BBC and EuroNews, which as best I can tell is the European riposte to CNN's Headline News, only with more cricket and Formula One highlights. We received precious little news about the United States, save for the occasional, unfortunate reminder that complete dumbasses were still in charge of it all. Unburdened by disappointments from the Homeland, my news consumption consisted mostly of trying to read headlines from Italian and Greek newspapers written in languages and alphabets, respectively, that I cannot understand or pronounce. Meantime, I regressed into an almost antediluvian state of satisfaction with the world.

So it’s taken me nearly six days to wind myself back into a tense coil of disgust, mostly because I’ve been artifically sustaining my insulation from all my usual media vices — Fox News at the gym, right wing radio as I putter around town, and daily plunges into the primordial yeast of The Weekly Standard , Powerline, and National Review Online. I’ve only barely looked at my favorite blogs, having spent three weeks reminding myself how to read actual books; now, to make matters worse, I find myself overwhelmed by the awesome volume of text the brilliant and clever fuckers on my Blogroll have been churning out since June 13. I'm optimistic that that any lingering feelings of slack-jawed felicity will soon be smothered.

I’m literally pouring myself an ouzo and grinding my teeth with anxiety as I write this.