Man, that presidentin' gig was hard, but it's almost finished for George W. Bush, and he's as happy to be leaving it as America is to see him go. It's an even wash. Except that Bush and his goons walk away stinking rich on war swag and a hundred other nightmare scams while everyone else is scared shitless for their future. After a recent closed-door fundraiser in St. Louis recently, former Missouri Senator John C. Danforth said Bush "seemed relieved" to be leaving office. "It was very unusual, I thought. I think it was a man who was relaxed and funny and looked as though he was about to shed this burden of the presidency. In a way, his speech seemed kind of like a valedictory. I took it as though, ‘I’ve done the best I can, I think I made the right decisions and now it’s almost over.’ ”
“He seems burdened, and he seems confident,” said David Guernsey, the owner of Guernsey Office Products, who hosted [a meeting between Bush and small business owners in VA]. “He seems sort of like a guy who’s saying, ‘Boy, I’m kind of winding this thing down and now this happens, so the next four months are going to be anything but quiet.’ But he seemed very confident that what Bernanke and Paulson and that crowd have put together is the fix.”
Yeah. They're doin' a heck of a job. [NYT via ThinkProgress]
Mean old 
On my way to work today—my last!—I stepped on a dead rat splayed out on Crosby street. At first I thought it was poop. And then I looked down and realized that at one point, the squishy mess had been a rat. I couldn't tell which was worse: dog poop or rat corpse? They feel the same under your foot. Then I realized that was as apt a metaphor as one could find on Crosby Street for my time at Gawker. Just kidding! (About the metaphor part. I totes did step on a rat on the way to work and it was gross.)
Things we'll never ever have to care about again, brought to our attention by Style.com's year in parties in review, include Arden Wohl and her headbands, whether the Mortimers or the Dexter-Jones/Ronson families were the "most ubiquitous clan of 2007," and whether the Olsens or the Millers (Savannah and Sienna) were the most ambitious sister act. Also, this might be as a good a time as any to give voice to my vitriolic hatred of Renee Zellweger, both her face and her craft. If she is beautiful in this world, this world is rotten. 