Fiat Lux
The 140 character version: Guests around table, chair on an angle, butt met chair, solid wood chair broke into pieces, butt met floor. Hilarity ensued.
It’s really, really busted. So now we have 5 chairs (that might or might not also fall apart) and one pile of kindling. Nobody was hurt and the chair wasn’t all that expensive, but 9 years later finding a replacement that matches will be a challenge.
Other than that, though, it was a good weekend.
We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.
Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20, 2009. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage.
We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Eight long years later, and the nightmare is almost over. Here’s two views I collected that sum up my feelings. First, from Ezra Klein, because he sums it up much better than I could:
Because George W. Bush was president, more people hate America. Because George W. Bush was president, more Americans view the presidency cynically. Because George W. Bush was president, this country is worse off, and this world is worse off. He betrayed us. I have no interest in engaging the debate that asks whether he was a cynical monster or a hapless fool. It is enough to say he was a failure, and leave it at that. He can spend the rest of his life giving speeches to justify his actions. But he will never be able to drown out the roar of his record.
And next, a bit of snark photographed by our pal Seamus:
Some kind folks at work have arranged to pipe in a live feed of the Inauguration Day festivities into a viewing area with plenty of seats and a big screen. I’ll be there, watching with a big smile on my face.
