the state of things

for once in my life, i have actually been paying attention to the news, especially the news in politics. i was talking with my family last night and someone brought up when mccain ran for president back in 2000, and i had no idea what they were talking about. what? he ran for president already? where was i?? how do i not remember that? let's see...i was 20 in 2000, so that would have meant my second year in college, which would have meant i was working at the wet seal at the crappiest mall in richmond. that would have been the beginning of my self-absorbed phase, which lasted until at least the summer of 2004, when i moved up to washington, dc. so that explains the lack of interest in politics, because clearly, at 20 years of age, i personally would have not given a rat's rear end about health care or the economy or gun control. i'm pretty sure i didn't even vote in the first election i was old enough to vote in, probably because that would have taken some time out of my day that i could have spent sleeping. not so this time around. it seems that once one actually has a job and a 401k and an insurance plan, some things that were at one point completely irrelevant suddenly become the most important things in the world. i don't want to pay taxes on my health care plan. i don't want to see the taxes that i do pay used to fund a war i don't understand. and i certainly don't want to continue paying close to $4 a gallon for gas. it should cost what it cost when i started driving: 99 cents a gallon. so, for the first time, i find myself riveted to the television, watching the debates, honestly caring about where the candidates stand on certain issues...it's insane. the more i find out about the government and the election, the less i care to know. all of this name calling and pointing fingers really gets redundant after a while, and if i were a political analyst on cnn, aside from making passes at anderson cooper, i would flat out tell america, hey ya'll...we're gonna be screwed for a while. everybody messed up and now we all have to pay for it. things might get worse before they get better, but they'll get better before long and it'll be another ten years before something like this happens again. but in the meantime, don't spend more money than you make and quit trying to skip out on paying taxes. it's interesting, this whole being a grown up thing, worrying about how much of your income will go towards a social security system that will more than likely implode by the time you're old enough to need it, or what the next president will do to decrease dependancy on foreign oil...i didn't even CARE about that kind of stuff before.

what i DO care about now, aside from all this economy and health care and foreign affairs crap...is that people start using the word "maverick" correctly.