I feel terrible. No, I’m not sick. I just feel like I let you down. You come here to avoid doing whatever it is that you should be doing and yet – for days – you’ve gotten the same old words and the same old screen while I have rather intentionally been avoiding you. You kept check, check, checking while I kept avoid, avoid, avoiding. I think our relationship is in trouble. There seems to be a communications problem.

But I thought of you often as I carried out my life’s random duties. I spoke out loud to you while I was in the woods, for example, on numerous occasions. I laughed as I gave my monologue about the Palin/Biden debate to the trees instead of you. I cursed at the radio and the newspapers as I heard/read the ninniness spill forward. And I confused my dog as I ranted to him – and him alone — about the complete and absolute nothingness of the Obama/McCain debate.

Once again, it felt like the merry-go-round was going too fast to get back on. It’s happened before – often, in fact. And then I remembered what to do: Walk away, you fool. Find something better to do. When the meaning you’re reaching for feels like – to steal a dopey McCain phrase — the jell-o you’re trying to nail to the wall, it’s not the meaning you need. Walk away, and let the slop fall to the floor.

And so I did. I hope you won’t hold it against me.

–

Having said that, let me contradict myself (again) and clean up my desk full of notes about the events gone by.

First, let’s dispense with the Palin/Biden debate. Personally, I felt dirty after watching it. I felt an urgent need to take a shower and purge myself of the experience when it was finally over.

I felt like I had gone to a hockey game and a fight didn’t take place. Or that I had attended a NASCAR race and no one wrecked. I wasn’t, for sure, expecting anything other than the entertainment provided by the slip-ups and embarrassments of the two well-polished participants. And when it didn’t happen, I felt cheated. And dirty.

The morphing of politics and entertainment seems to be complete in America. Because I’m not sure anymore if the entertainment industry (a la Saturday Night Live, John Stewart, etc.) is imitating politics or if our politicians are imitating the entertainment industry. Why can’t we just vote for Stewart and Tina Fey and call it a day?

The expectations of “viewers” and “voters” seem to be the same: Go to sleep, be passive at best, tune in to watch and then tune out. Don’t risk anything. Don’t demand anything. And don’t expect anything other than to be entertained – first by the politicians and then by the mockers of the politicians.

According to the New York Times, the viewers/voters of America lost over $2 trillion in retirement savings last week. And yet we basically yawned as a nation and sat with our popcorn and watched our leading candidates serve up nothing but jive and jargon when it came to addressing it. Oh well, it’s nothing the remote control can’t fix, right? Click, and off we go to get some chuckles as Fey and Stewart make us laugh at the fact that our futures are in the hands of complete fools.

Poor Ralph Nader. He’s so goddamned old fashioned that he doesn’t know about the modern morphing of viewership and citizenship. This silly man actually thinks that the American people will soon be taking their outrage to the streets. Oh Ralph, that’s so 1960s. We’ve got parody now! And if that doesn’t do the trick, we click over to “Dancing with the Stars.” Ah, goodbye outrage…

–

As for the Obama/McCain debate, I was mostly just grossed out by McCain’s creepiness. When he wasn’t wandering around the stage looking like he was trying to stop from crapping in his pants, McCain was calling anyone and everyone his “friends.” And Obama was being Obama by being a wimpy liberal and refusing to either call McCain on his nonsense or – better yet – offer up some substance of his own.

Wouldn’t it have been great, for example, if Obama would have just told him directly to stop calling him his “friend” because true friends don’t trash you behind your back? McCain has been like the Eddie Haskell candidate: Being a little prick until the parents/media/opponent are in the same room with him (yes, that was a reference to “Leave it to Beaver”).

It’s also very cowardly. All week we heard jab after jab from the McCain campaign about Obama and his “friendship” with the “domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers. But then McCain goes face to face with Obama and the little sissy doesn’t utter a peep about it. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, that’s Sarah Palin’s job. Sure, John, hide behind the skirt – first Cindy’s and now Sarah’s. I’m beginning to see a pattern.

Again, it would have been nice to see Obama awake from his debate slumber in attempt to actually connect with the confusion and pain that has settled on our nation like a wet blanket. He might have, for example, addressed this “domestic terrorist” term that was being thrown around all week by equating it with the Wall Street thugs who have just hijacked our economy. If wiping out $2 trillion in retirement accounts isn’t domestic terrorism, I don’t know what is.

Oops, I almost forgot: Obama and his handlers and contributors are neck-deep in the mess. Silly me.

Ah, only in America can you go to jail for stealing food for your family but get a bonus for stealing trillions from the masses.

I’m going back to the woods.