BLUE MONDAY, TERRIFIC TUESDAY

JAN. 19, 2009, was this year's so-called BLUE MONDAY.

The origins of the term, dreamed up only recently in this context, seem to trace back to some sheister part-time professor in Cardiff, Wales, in some crass commercial endeavour to sell the need to buy something to cheer us all up.

But if you google "Most depressing day of the year" you'll get 408,000 results back in less than one second.

And many of them will talk about how today, Monday, Jan. 19, is supposedly the most depressing day of 2009 on Earth, or at least in the Northern Hemisphere -- the Monday of the third full week in January.

It's alternately called Miserable Monday.

The rationale? For millions of people, the long, cold winter has set in and it's not about to loosen its icy grip. The credit card bills from all those Christmas gifts you couldn't afford are pouring in.

The days are short, the nights are long. Summer's warmth is just a dream. All those New Year's resolutions are being broken, one by one. This spells it all out.

But the irony is, Blue Monday is happening in the midst of something much more positive and on the eve of an historic occasion that has me feeling upbeat, optimistic and truly, as has been his mantra, filled with hope.

What will follow Blue Monday today, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009, is the end of George W. Bush's de-BOTCH-ery in the White House and the beginning of Barack Obama's new order.

And it has even warmed up considerably here in the Great White North, just in time for Obama's inauguration, although I hear it's cold as hell in Washington, D.C.

So while we could focus on the ugliness of Bush's last eight years and the Iraq war and so many other things about his presidency, let's turn up the volume on what Blue Monday's REALLY all about.

Let's say goodbye to this Texas Twit...

My god, how he has so ruined the planet and America's standing

on the world stage...his only contrition has been that he "might" have made a few mistakes...



He has left Obama with nothing but problems, he's left the world with far more problems -- avoidable ones, problems HE created -- than when he took office.



The beautiful thing is, now he's finally riding off into the sunset.

All that's left now, rather than bemoan his awful legacy, which so many have done over these past few years, is to look ahead in a warm and positive light and what we can only hope is to come.

Obama's inauguration on Tuesday will be something to behold. It's a lot of pomp and ceremony, but this is a global event that cannot be under-estimated in its importance for all.

I can't remember in my lifetime feeling that a politician so moved me or gave me so much hope in the wake of so much despair about the way things were. Now it should be all about how the way things can be.

I believe, I really do, that this man is a messiah in the human sense of the word, not the religious one.

I see him as the person, with his team, that can bring sanity back to world affairs, just because of who he is and who I believe him to be.

So if Jan. 19 was Blue Monday or Miserable Monday, then Tuesday will be a new kind of Super Tuesday or Terrific Tuesday, and I'm not talking about the U.S. primaries.

We'll have to wait and see. The fact is, as America goes, so goes Canada and the rest of the western world and, in some ways, the whole planet. This is historic, it's hope and it's happenin'.