These are strange days we live in; seemingly no money in the world and clowns getting the sack on either side of the pond. The days of cocktails and early Friday knocking-offs have turned dusky and it’s all getting a little uncertain.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said that when the going gets weird the weird turn pro. 2009 is shaping up to be a year for the weird. Or maybe not weird, perhaps all that is happening is change. But after so much time under the cosh, so to speak, change does feel a little weird.

For eight long years we, the television watching/media spoon-fed populace, have been subject to images of desert-fatigue clothed men scurrying across sands or through darkened dry stone buildings, the groundbreaking methods of reporting from where the action is actually happening, and a small guy with all his hair talking to the world on his terms and his terms only.

Eight years as torturous as some isolated Guantanamo interrogation room where nobody but nobody can hear you scream, as they pull out the pliers or crank up the amplifier so you can hear the drip-dripping a whole lot clearer.

Remember, forlorn promises from the likes of Ari Fleischer and Donald Rumsfeld in the seemingly entirely blue White House pressroom as choking black smoke columns grew in number.

Or the President of the United States sticking out his tongue and giving a V-sign (maybe he was trying to copy Winston Churchill but got confused) to the world before delivering a grave message about the state of the world and everybody’s need to protect themselves from the ubiquitous threat.

Well if you don’t, I do. Slouched down on a couch in some college front room pit-hole watching Sky News reporters running around with blue microphones, telling us what it was like to really be there and everybody telling each other how cool it was to see somebody who was really there.

Afternoon after afternoon, evening after evening, watching as the world was being torn apart while jerks in suits assured us it was for our own good, not for the reasons we all knew without even really knowing -- the real reasons. ‘Real’ -- now there’s a word that might regain some of its meaning in 2009.

Now, now that votes are counted and an entire phase of rhetoric and political correctness is useless we can finally say it; say it loud and proud oh brothers, America’s first black president is here.

Today, the year of our Lord 2008, a crack of hope in the monolith of white-rule has appeared and with it light shines on all continents of the world. Not only is he black, he has as much experience as a community organizer as he has in the hopelessly disconnected world of high-powered politics.

An undisguised blessing or perhaps only a lesser of two evils, who knows. What I would like to know is what Dr. Thompson would have thought.