The Republican convention, with its waves of unbalanced distortion, Aqua Velva and Old Spice, comes to a close. Thus brings an end to the only four days in my personal history when I actually didn't wish I could visit Minneapolis.
Yet, one thing has changed in my personal life, thanks to that aging beauty queen and moose-eating verbal bomb thrower known as Sarah Palin.
I once had a girlfriend named Sarah. She was amazing, with her intelligence coupled with an inner and outer beauty I never found again in one package. When she turned to me out of the blue one day and asked "Have you ever read Anna Karenina", I melted as only a male brain whore can.
The story of Sarah and I is quite convoluted and not worthy of a lengthy place here, and based on where Sarah and I now find ourselves in our respective stories with regard to personal peace and happiness, one that is best left to the sands of history. Yet there's always one person in your life that leaves a mark. As the late, great Steve Goodman said:
At night they make their lives complete
In the safety of their dreams
By throwing their arms around the one that got away
Sarah was such a person, to the point that whenever I heard her first name attached to another person, no matter how innocuously, I felt some sort of serendipitous kneejerk affection for everyone in the world named Sarah.
And so it was.....until about a week ago.
Sarah Palin is a revolting human being. In one week, we have learned that she lies with no sense of irony, is willing to sacrifice her kids at the altar of ambition, she was the mayor of the Alaskan equivalent of Mayberry and couldn't even get that right and, perhaps worst of all, she routinely eats Bullwinkle.
So thank you, Sarah Palin. It took 15 years, but I finally found one person in this world named Sarah who is so vile and disgusting that my natural predilection towards skepticism has finally returned. Now I can go back to dreaming of being late to wherever it is I'm supposed to be, and then finally arriving there wearing nothing but jockey shorts and attempting to ride a unicycle with one pedal.
OH, and I'm voting for Obama. You suck.