10. I didn’t vote for this cat.

9. It’s an exciting time to live in; I’ll be able to tell my children I lived during The Beginning Of The End.

8. Well, New York isn’t really like the rest of America anyway. So I can pretend I’m living in my own little country. I’ll make little passports out of takeout menus.

7. The things I believe in that Bush will not allow us to do will still go on, just in countries with more enlightened administrations. Good things don’t last forever, and the decline of American leadership was bound to happen. This is natural and there are ways around everything.

6. If it becomes really intolerable, I do have options. There are a lot of great things about this country but I am not chained to it. Ignorant people joke about Canada but I’ve been there and it’s fantastic. So if it really gets bad I can do the right thing and run like a chicken.

5. When things really, really suck, it tends to make you stronger in some way (unless you run like a chicken, which is its own sort of reward).

4. The next four years will make me learn to withstand emotional torment and my tolerance of being hated for things I didn’t do.

3. The next four years will teach me to be strong in the face of the fact that the rich get richer and the poor get fucked.

2. If I get hit by a bus sometime in the next four years, well, the world will be a little easier to leave behind.

1. The regions of the world I will have to avoid to prevent having my head cut off are still fairly small.