Welcome to the sequel:  Monday, Part 2 -- The Non-Incredible Sameness of It All.

Oh, sure. We could mist up some, get all starry-eyed, get down on one knee, mutter a hazy, uncertain prayer, and utter our eternal gratitude, all because our elected representatives in Washington finally started doing (gasp!) their jobs.  Avoiding a national and worldwide financial meltdown was a side bonus, of course.

Somehow, I'm just not there, way off in Blissful Gratitude Land somewhere.  It just doesn't seem like that much of a bargain or blessing.

Of course, we're not currently engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the streets, with the prize being the dubious but life-sustaining reward of dining on weeks-old dumpster fare.  That's a Good Thing, that whole Avoiding Apocalypse business.  I'm glad House representatives are finally allowing the country to do as its laws say, and actually honor the debts they have approved all along.

Popcorn could be just the breakthrough we've all been looking for.

We've long needed something to help break through Madison Avenue's icy grip on our minds and on our wallets.  It could even allow, and help facilitate, contact with the Space Aliens openly living in our midst, called Republicans.

Popcorn?  Madison Avenue?  Space Aliens?

OK, let's back up and go slowly.  For openers, you know how a familiar feeling of vulnerability sometimes goes -- the sense that there are teams of psychologists working around the clock, seeking inroads to your psyche, in order to make you want to buy useless products, and ensure you are helpless to all commercial ads and suggestions, right?

Those feelings are normal, of course.

It's an interesting phenomenon:  You have a tiny shard of the U.S. population holding itself, and the world, hostage via the Shutdown-Blowdown-Blowup fever dreams of a handful of boneheads who dress up like Constitutional preservationists and protectionists -- while those same boneheads betray the very document they themselves claim to be supporting and providing safe harbor, all while using that same document as a handy club on all who dare disagree with them.

It's interesting, all right -- and in the same twisted, horrific, hold-your-breath-way that it's interesting to consider what happens, say, when a freight train filled with 13 million gallons of molasses and Super Glue piles into an oncoming train loaded down with 42 tons of high grit sandpaper and radioactive goose feathers .

But, then, such confusing Constitutional antics are in keeping with all the other hypocrisies of Tea Party nitwits, so there's no real surprise that their train of thought has once more leapt the tracks and pulled up outside a station named "Tri-Cornered Logic" -- if you'll pardon the oxymoron.

October:  This is the traditional month for frost on the pumpkin,  a jump-started sweet tooth, and a handful of artificial horrors.

Except every day is a day of all-too-real horror with Republicans.  Forget Elm Street -- every day is Nightmare on Capitol Hill these days, and each day comes with at least one twisted plot twist and adrenalin rush.  It's not unlike the ultimately depressing, empty-calorie gore-banquet of a slasher flick.

You know the feeling:  The highly-charged, hyper-energized sensation stemming from emptying half of your Trick-or-Treat stash in one sitting.  As usual, that sugar-rushing rocket ride can be exhilarating, but the plummet back to Earth is always queasy and dizzy-making.

Thing is, for adults, there is no staying home from school, no matter how much of a bellyful you've had of it all, and no matter how much it hurts.

* * * * *

I know a little something about horror.  For the last 263 days, I've been playing host to my own Mortality, night and day, with no breaks and no time off for good behavior. I've been fighting cancer.

Well, after more than a decade of heavy use and pushing their certified load limits, it's finally happened:  I've broken the backs on all my expletives.  They're in traction, up at Lingua Franca University Hospital, in Esperanto.

I blame the current GOP-created-and-sponsored government shutdown as much as I do the amount of overwork my profane and explicit oaths and exclamations have been subjected to, ever since Reagan slipped through the cracks of the founding fathers' notions of a wise and informed populace, and a watchdog press, keeping a close and good eye on its leaders and their use of power.

Doctors of Etymology had been providing me steady warnings about the possibility of buckled expletives ever since I sprained my tongue back in late 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court drove a stake through the heart of the U.S. Constitution on December 12th and ended democracy here.

More on our country from the only viable, mostly-untainted point of access -- the foreign press:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24142085

My reaction?

Well, sure, I mean:

If someone doesn't get their Uber Grande Triple Mocha Espresso with Caramel Monkeybutt Sauce and Cupid's Arrow and Heart Design in their Whipped Cream just right, then, in 'Merica, that customer should have the right to pump a couple of magazines of steel-jacketed rounds and dum-dums into the bastard barista who ruined their day, week, and life, right?