Despairing at the thought of four years of Dubya, I scurried about the dusty chambers of my progressive mind looking for hope.

Drugs? I don't think so. This far along in life, I seem to have settled on caffeine and nicotine. To try anything more at this point smacks of the compulsive, misguided desperation of Ponce de Leon.

Emigration? Come on. How much bandwidth do you think Cuernavaca has, and how noise-free is whatever bandwidth it has?

A nunnery? Now there’s a possibility. But how many nunneries would let me out once a week to restock my nicotine supply? Jesus (so to speak)! For that matter, how many nunneries would tolerate my use of my nicotine supply?

No, no, no. You gotta be realistic, Doc, I thought. Clearly, the way to go is to become one of t-h-e-m. Let’s see…

I could dye and pomade what hair I have left. Keep it trimmed neat and short à la Tom DeLay.

Exploit some overworked bespoke tailor in New Delhi and order 10 Young Republican suits.

Replace my wife’s Camry with a Lincoln Navigator and my Corolla with a Humvee.

Resign from Magellan’s Log and apply as a copy boy at the National Review, or volunteer as a gofer in Jesse Helms’s office.

Condition myself to watch only the Fox network.

Get a copy of Ken Weaver’s guide to the proper language of the Lone Star State, Texas Crude, and start tawking rat good.

Eat barbecue and beans three times a day.

Learn to fart loud and proud.

Attempt to replace Stephen Harrigan as Laura Bush’s official biographer.

Begin getting my Neo-Republican ashes hauled in Boys’ Town in Nuevo Laredo and write funny dispatches from there about the cross-border effects of trickle-down economics as evidenced by the number of satellite dishes on the shacks around the maquilladoras.

Hoping to get all kinds of inside geopolitical info, toady up to Henry Kissinger and feed his resentment about how that johnny-come-lately Colin Powell was appointed to the position that only Kissinger really knows how to fill (just ask the Cambodians, if you have any doubts Henry's Realpolitik virtuosity).

Take correspondence course in feng-shui and become the official Crawford, Texas, geomancer, doing pro bono work for the Bush ranch.


Infiltrate the capitol in Tallahassee as Assistant Building Maintenance Engineer and write best-seller based on contents of Katherine Harris’s wastebaskets.

Start website called "No Mandate!" suggesting that we plaster the nation’s cars with bumperstickers containing that reminder. I mean, has Dubya been behaving much like somebody who lost the popular vote by 500,000?

Start website called "Secede Now!" urging all states that voted for Gore to do just that.

Start website called "Dumbing Down" offering encouragement to all spoiled rich kids about how even they, with Daddy’s help, can make it to the top in spite of low I.Q., zero interest in culture or ideas, and a complete lack of understanding of what it is like to have a sick child and no access to adequate food or medical assistance.