Obama's big moment (and the fat lady)

I watched the inauguration of Barak Obama this afternoon on the internet, and I have to admit that to my surprise it was quite an emotional experience for me. Not because I'm a fan of these ceremonies, and neither am I particularly impressed with the significance of these occasions. What really gave me the first big lump in my throat was from when I was watching the behind the scenes feeds that CNN were showing. And the particular piece that got me was where Obama was seen walking alone through the Whitehouse corridors seconds before he was announced and emerged to face the waiting crowd. The look on his face was screaming 'yes, this really is happening to me and I'm going to savour every last second' - you just knew that this was a really magical moment in his and a lot of other peoples lives.

Unfortunately as the ceremony moved on, and before the swearing-in began we were subjected to an excruciatingly painful din being emitted from a huge fat lady in a very odd looking hat. I think she was attempting to sing a song called America but she was clearly way out of her depth. Her name was something like Urethra Wanklin and she wailed on for what seemed like an endless period of time. It's a shame someone didn't have the foresight to simply drag her off and do us all a huge favour. Hopefully though, someone will be severely reprimanded for her attempts at ruining Barak's big day.

Endurance was obviously the name of the game in this ceremony as some kind of preacher (another very large person) was produced and rambled on and on for ages about God, God, and (yawn) God. Why Americans love ramming religion down everyones throats is beyond me, and it really does take the edge off these occasions. For a while I was actually hoping that God did exist and would throw a little thunderbolt down at this chap. Not enough to kill him of course, that really wouldn't be good, but just enough to stun him so that the events could finally move on to the eagerly awaited climax.

So, fat ladies and preachers all finally dispatched, we had the swearing in and poor old Barak fluffed his words a couple of times, and so I think did the guy who was feeding him, but who could blame him. He was living his dream in front of millions of people all hanging onto his every word, and anyway it only went to prove he's human. Finally he turned to his wife Michelle and gave her a kiss - and I got another lump in my throat.