Legend has it that the famed evil-doer Caligula, he of the incestuous orgies, bacchanals and gleeful, endless corruption was actually a wacky laissez-faire reformer. That he'd come to the conclusion that the only way to confront the excesses that would doom Imperial Rome to the dustbins of history and the back rooms of the Catholic Church was to embrace the prevailing corruption, the decadence, the murder, the incest, the graft; to bring it to a public boil, to flaunt it publicly, to wave it like a red flag to the dispirited bull of the polity, in the (vain) hope that anger would help the bull discover some vigor, and that their anger in turn would help Rome back on its way to a reform that could save her. Of course, it didnt work, but hey, the man tried. So in celebration of him and his works, I congratulate America on it's choices this year. Everywhere, we have chosen just the right people to lead us into an apocalypse. Corporate yes-men, hard-balling oil cowboys, Enron-friendly legislators, tax-the-poor tough-lovers, religious fundamentalists and the like-- just the crew of activist reformers that we so clearly need to push us over the brink of unrefined collapse and catastrophe . A brink we obviously need to charge over, lemming-like, before we see the need for any real changes. Sad about the people who will die, but hey, business is business. Which reminds me, I have an orgy to attend.

Caligula