At one point or another, most New Orleanians develop a Marie Antoinette Complex (which, sadly, has nothing to do with brioche, big wigs, or brocade dresses). It’s not a terminal condition; in fact, it may come and go quite frequently over the course of one’s life. The Complex often goes unnoticed, until finally one day the other shoe drops.

You’ll be going about your work, minding your own business, innocently making a pot of gumbo or red beans, depending on the day of the week and the weather outside. From next door, you can hear your neighbor listening to some jumpin’ New Orleans-style funk on WWOZ. Needing a bit of a break, you collapse on the sofa, beer in one hand, remote control in the other, and innocently flip over to CNN–only to discover that the rest of the world has gone Stark Raving Mad.

I experience the Complex at least once or twice a year–usually when I visit relatives in Mississippi or Alabama. I’m fine on the drive over, while I’ve got my CDs and consistent access to NPR, but when I step out of my car, things get all weird. Like, alternate universe weird. People walk the streets in curious, acid-washed clothing. They watch something called NASCAR. They eat Twinkies–deep-fried Twinkies. And their music…well, it’s charming, but it’s something we don’t get much down here. In all, it’s like seeing an America I never knew existed.

The same thing happened on Wednesday morning, after all the votes had been tallied.

Here I am, chock-full of red blood, doing my thing, contributing to my community and occasionally, like Miss Antoinette herself, playing shepherdess in the privacy of my backyard, when all of a sudden the masses go and do something utterly befuddling. They pass laws that seem not just protective, but mean-spirited. They veer to the right–though only slightly–and elect officials that ran on platforms of inclusion but have done nothing but divide. It all reeks of the same hysteria that allowed Joe McCarthy to run roughshod over the First Amendment some 50 years ago.

I know I’m partially to blame, what with the constant flag-burning parties in my living room and the way I recruit ten-year-olds through my aggressive gay agenda. But I can’t help thinking that the god of the Red Staters (who also goes by the names of Yaweh and Allah, mind you) is up there thinking, “What in My Name has gotten into you people?”

The one bright spot: Orleans Parish has an almost completely new school board, so when Heather gets to elementary school-age, her two mommies may well be able to send her to public school.

So, Tuesday’s votes were clearly troubling–if not for our simpleton of a president and his NASCAR-loving, fag-hating constituents, then at least for me. But what’s a gal to do? Get the hell out of Dodge? Harper’s Magazine makes it pretty clear that that’s not much of an option. Hire a squadron of assassins to take out Karl Rove and Karen Hughes? Fun, perhaps, but there’s probably more where they came from. A good old fashioned suicide bombing? We’ll see.

In the meantime, try these on for size. I know they’re silly and sophomoric. Sorry, but that’s just where I am right now…

It’s hard not to take this election very, very personally. It’s clear that homophobes–toiling under the allegedly more compassionate banner of “social conservatives”–mobilized voters through campaigns wrought with homophobic invective. As a result, not only did Monkeybrain McGruff win another four years in office, but also anti-gay marriage amendments were written into 11 state constitutions. Maybe I’ve got a bit of martyr’s complex going on, but I’m feeling very Helen Reddy/”You and Me Against the World” right now.

Isn’t there someplace I can go for one of them free lobotomy dealie-os? I mean, where do all those Republicans get theirs? …It’d just make my life so much easier. And it might help with this sudden urge I have to buy half a dozen handguns and start mowing down everyone with a Bush/Cheney sticker on the back of his SUV.

If (a) you’re dreading the next 18 hours of election day-TV and (b) you dig on 80s-style LA/Euro rock (think The Romantics) and (c) you have a speedy web connection, by all means check out the Flash video for TISM’s “Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me”. It’s easily worth a good five minutes of distraction from all the newsanchor autobabble. Hell–play it once for each time you hear Tom Brokaw utter the word “poll,” and it’ll be midnight before you know it. [Via Screenhead, of course.]

And the word of the day is…Cyprian (SIP-ree-uhn):

Adjective

1. Of, or pertaining to Cyprus.

2. Lewd.

Noun

1. A native or inhabitant of Cyprus; a Cypriot.

2. A lewd person.

Just like teacher used to tell you: use it three times a sentence and it’s yours forever. In this case, stick to the secondary meanings–they’ll come in far more handy. For example:

Last night, as Lily Crystalle removed her shimmering brassiere while dancing en pointe, the mood of the men in the grand ballroom (and of many women, too) shifted from bemused and buoyant to downright Cyprian.

“Next on Oprah, please welcome one of the best-known performers of yesteryear, everyone’s favorite troubled troubador, that Cyprian songstress of the South, Ms. Britney Spears-Federline.”

“Sir, I assure you that in grasping your buttocks and shoving you headlong into the canned fruit display, I was only trying to prevent you from being run down by an errant shopping cart: my motives were entirely selfless, not Cyprian.”