Hopey Changey

Today while driving home from the dentist I saw something that was nothing short of hilarious. It is always good to see something hilarious on one's way to or from the dentist, I think. A little mood lightener.

I was second in line to turn left. The car first in line was waiting until the green light appeared and then cautiously began to turn left. This caused the third car in line, behind me, to honk immediately, because of course by not anticipating and gunning it, the first car in line had cost maybe ten or twenty milliseconds of the driver's day.

Needless to say, after we had all turned and were driving down the next road, the third vehicle, which turned out to be a pick-up truck, sped past me and the car in front of me, undoubtedly to make up those precious milliseconds. This was when I was privileged to behold the sign in the rear window of the cab of the pick-up.

It was on orange paper or posterboard -- hard to tell the material, although I do hope it was translucent for all of our sakes, if not the driver's -- and it covered the rear window. Somewhat baseball game sign style, it was written in large black marker letters: HEY DUMB-ASS! HOW'S THAT HOPE-Y CHANGE-Y THING WORKING OUT FOR YOU?

Fantastic, I tell you. Among the things I love about it, besides the bizarre behavior of a sign covering the entire back window, are how it caused me to ponder: how on earth has this person's life changed since Obama came into office? I mean, really? Here's this negative, derisive comment implying that we are going to hell in a handbasket or some such thing. But I became immensely curious as to what precisely has changed in this person's life? And if something has changed, was it really for the worse? Let alone a direct result of Obama? Because I would love to know what that is. It would appear to me that lives that have changed may include Guantanamo Bay detainees and CEOs of certain multimillion dollar companies, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the driver is not one of those. I am so curious as to what has changed. The number of beads of sweat on some TV commentator as he spews hot air? What?

I would love to see a "change" in my inability to have comprehensive health insurance, but I am still waiting on that one. I guess there is the change that we no longer have to live in the pesky shame of trying to make the world understand why "we" are not doing anything about having a White House occupier who kept stealing elections. That's definitely a good change, although it would have happened no matter who was elected. Oh yeah, and we now have a president who will talk about things over a beer, which totally rules, in comparison to our faux-righteous teetotaller warmonger.

Don't get me wrong: I thought (and still do) that Obama's campaign "slogans" were some of the most dumbed-down and empty rhetoric I had ever heard. As I stated many times, his campaign was a kind of shallow hypnosis that reeled in a lot of lemmings and had some bizarre effect on people that I will never understand, much like Michael Jackson or Harry Potter. But I somehow think this driver wasn't engaging in a critical analysis of Obama's rhetoric; the sign asked about results. Whether s/he was or not, I am still amused that s/he drives around with this homemade sign plastered across the back truck window.

Also, Hopey and Changey kind of sound like the eighth and ninth dwarves.