National Hangover Days

If I were President, these would totally happen.

Yuck.

If I were President, every citizen would be granted the daily right to vote on whether to declare that day a National Hangover Day. A day when the entire country would be allowed to just say "Fuck It", unplug their alarm clocks and pull the covers back up over their heads to sleep one off in blissful peace. There are just some nights when it becomes clear it will not be in the national interest for you to go to work the next day.

Man down. Save the beer.

We've all been there, buddy. Here's how it would work:

Every bedroom in every home would come equipped with a special government-issue nightstand featuring a special button implanted in one of the upper corners. Each nightstand's button, when pressed, would automatically send a signal directly to the White House indicating another vote for a National Hangover Day to be declared. Taking into consideration the potential for abuse of the system, each nightstand would be replaced annually and would cease to work after five uses, or "buttonpushes", whichever you prefer.

Little help?

Every day, I would gather my Cabinet ("Good morning Secretary Nader, Secretary Gibbs, Secretary Makarowski") in the Oval Office around 7:30am and await the daily tally of citizens requesting a National Hangover Day. There would be a "magic number", derived daily from various cultural and economic indicators, that, if reached before 8am EST, would allow me to gleefully pick up a bourbon-colored phone and direct the operator on the other end to bring relief to millions by declaring another National Hangover Day.

Sec. Makarowski's twin needs an NHD

Buttons on nightstands across the country would then glow red and red-eyed, dehydrated people everywhere would rejoice by sinking back into their dream of floating a raft down a sea of malt liquor.

Party on, Wayne.

And there would be much rejoicing.

On a side note, I tried in earnest to keep up with Mr. Bush last night, abiding by the spirit, if not the letter, of the 2006 SOTU drinking game posted yesterday. "Freedom" and "terror" alone killed a third of my beer supply (by the way, for all you prose types out there, those words would make for a great opening line to a story. If you like em, they're yours). And that was just the first fifteen minutes.

I was IMing with my friends Eric and Nate during and after the speech and we did a pretty good job of riling each other up. The Democrats' rebuttal, delivered by Governor Tim "Are you kidding me? How could this not go to Barack?" Kaine (D-VA), was disappointing and caused my mood to shift from something resembling bloodlust, to a feeling I can only imagine resembled what that cosmonaut who floated out of his shuttle's cargo bay to take man's first steps into space felt like.

It was in that frame of mind, however, that I came upon this: a recording of the first Daily Show after 9/11. Powerful. I don't remember seeing this the first time around. I think I was still hiding in the Shenandoah Mountains at that point.

But Jon Stewart's opening monologue is a killer; an emotional time machine and also, I think, a very nice way to honor the passing of Coretta Scott King. I wonder what would have happened if the Dems had simply played this last night instead of serving up more platitudes and rhetoric.

Anyway, I didn't mean to end this post on such a heavy note so here's a different Daily Show clip, one where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert totally lose it on camera after Stephen fellates a banana. Happy National Hangover Day.