My Irish Up: Chaos is coming! Nov. 8! Chaos!

Michael T. Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

I celebrated National Cat Day on Monday with exchanges of catnip and myrrh among my loved ones, plenty of libations, and a small parade beginning at His Majesty’s Throne Room (the litter box) and continuing to the window in front of the bird feeder. I’m sure your day was similar.

Those who decided National Cat Day should fall on Oct. 29, however, don’t know a lot about cats, insisting that we honor them for, and I quote directly: “The wonderful love they bestow upon us.” Ha and double-ha! A cat loves only itself, and is much the better pet for it. Those who are looking for love should get a dog.

Perhaps, you missed National Cat Day because of some lame excuse or other, so I wanted to remind you of other upcoming dates of national significance. For example, Nov. 6 is next Tuesday, and we should all know what an important day that is, this year. Right — it’s National Saxophone Day! In late-breaking news, your columnist has discovered that Belgian Gustavus Sax patented the saxophone on Nov. 6, 1846, which, reliable sources indicate, fell that year directly after Nov. 5 (which, one presumes, is National Are You Ready for National Saxophone Day Because, You Know, It’s Like Tomorrow?)

More to the point, Nov. 6 is also National Lost Without a Compass Day, which pretty well sums up the political situation right now. The National Whatever Day Calendar website explains that “no one knows” how Nov. 6 became National Lost Without a Compass Day, but I’ll bet that closer research would reveal that it began in some other national election year. You’d think our major party choices  couldn’t get any worse, but the major candidates last time seemed pretty good, at least until John McCain decided to morph away from being John McCain, abandoning his maverick and more moderate views. I think 2000 was the recent nadir, with Bush versus Gore, unless it was 1988 which featured Dukakis versus Bush I, who is beginning to look really presidential in retrospect.

I thought I was definitely voting for Obama this year, in hopes of somehow getting my $8 back, but since all the hoopla surrounding Oct. 29 reminded me of the greatness of my cat, I considered writing in his — or is it her? — name for president of the United States. But then I remembered that I can’t remember its current name. It started out as Rowry and then I inherited it and called him/her/it Socrates, but then I noticed the cat was left-handed, so a couple years later I decided on Lefty. She’s soft on Communism, anyway, and also on her underbelly and around her neck and back. So never mind.

Anyway, though the status quo would hardly change with either candidate, it does make a big difference who is elected this year. For example, Romney said the other day that because Obama won in 2008 we are “four years closer to a nuclear Iran” — but if Romney gets elected in 2012, with his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to foreign policy, I am afraid we will be four years closer to a nuclear war. And it’s like that on just about every issue: not so hot over here, terrible over there. Guess I’ll settle for not so hot. You will, of course, make your own determination, but I can’t imagine that you’re particularly thrilled either.

Besides, neither ticket can stop the Western world’s long slide toward economic and environmental ruin, already so thoroughly underway that it’s only a matter of when, not if. The energy/environment iceberg lies dead ahead and neither Republicans nor Democrats have professed to even seeing the thing yet. Privately, the Democrats hope to tiptoe around it — hard to tiptoe with The Titanic on your back — but it’s too late to change the course of such an unwieldy vessel. And Romney and his friends pretend the killer-berg is hundreds of miles away, so they want to speed everything up even more — even though the engines are already white-hot and fuel supplies are running low — thinking that if we do happen to cross paths we’ll just ram the thing and sink it. Good luck with that, Mein Kapitan. At least Captain Obama would try to pick the survivors out of the water. Captain Romney wouldn’t bother, since clearly we should have planned ahead and built our own ocean liners.

Meanwhile, know what Nov. 8 is? National Chaos Never Dies Day! Also, National Dunce Day!

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Mike Corrigan is now a professional cat-whisperer.