Yup...

... we're off today, Bush. Me and "The Bush Diaries" and "The Real Bush Diaries." Into the wild blue. If you think of the liberal blogosphere as blue, which it largely, I suppose, is. There will be dyed-in-the-wool Democratic politicians on hand, I hear. Barbara Boxer. Howard Dean. Nancy Pelosi...

The intention I'm making for myself before I go is to make these pages better known and to increase our readership. Not looking for fame and fortune, then, but a voice. I started out thinking this was something I could actually DO at a moment--the moment after your "re-election, Bush--when I was feeling stunned by the sheer, unbelievable ignorance and gullibility of the American electorate. I'm a writer, I thought then: at least I can write. I stumbled innocently into blogland--and found it the ideal medium for my purpose. To not bury my head. To stay awake. To speak the truth as I see it, in what I hoped would be a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

And now it's mid-term election time, and I find there's more that I want to do: I want to contribute that voice insofar as I can to the reversal of your fortunes and to your party's long-overdue disempowerment. I want to join the now very considerable effort to return this country to its rightful destiny as a great and peaceful warrior in the defense of the planet Earth and her inestimable beauty. I want us to cease being the villain of the story of this twenty-first century and become, if not its hero, at least a conscientious player in the continuing human drama.

As for "The Real Bush Diaries", well, I get to see my first actual copy today. I heard yesterday from Las Vegas that my shipment had arrived at its destination, and I'm look forward to feeling the heft of the thing. I spend a lot of time looking into this damn screen and being dazzled by its peculiar, magical energy and light. But it's no substitute, so far as I'm concerned, for the weight and substance of a real book, with real pages you can turn.

So I do hope to sell a few copies out there in Las Vegas, Bush. But more than that, I trust that "The Real Bush Diaries" will be a useful tool in bringing us new daily readers for this journal. That's what it's all about.

So... as I sometimes--often--ask you, Bush: wish me luck.