At least that's something to laugh about. The rest of the situation here, surely, is not.

There is a sense of eerie quiet and frustration while people wait to see what's ahead. There are mixed feelings toward President Mohammad Khatami.

Most utter his name with bitterness: "This guy just made promises he never kept."

But we all know that whatever he did — or rather, didn't do — we will not get the chance to criticize the next guy as much.

When the Guardian Council declared the name of the eight notorious candidates, the silence was deafening. Taxi drivers were too bitter to even mention it. Students just walked around shaking their heads.

The news was not shocking — we all knew it was coming. We even knew of the president's letter that would follow asking the Guardian Council to reconsider their slate. But none of that really matters now.

(The Guardian Council is Iran's hardline constitutional watchdog. It has barred thousands of liberals from parliamentary and presidential elections slated for this month.)

Eight years ago, a small minority both inside and outside the country ripped out their throats trying to criticize this same election process.

But when Khatami was making election speeches, all that mattered was that finally there was somebody who seemed to be running against the unpopular status quo.

Now experience should tell us that one man cannot change anything. With so many centres of power and invisible hands at work, what can one person accomplish? Do we condemn him for trying? Perhaps.

Yet, despite what we say now, and despite all the bitterness we feel, for someone sitting inside this mess, Khatami did make some difference.

If nothing else, when my country's anthem was played around the world, a well-groomed person capable of coherent speech was there to represent it.

But Khatami is one of "them" and maybe the thing is that we don't want another "them."

He stood silent and watched the cases of slain Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi and murdered secular nationalist activists Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar wither away into a blur of nothingness.

He watched the newspapers die and the journalists attacked.

He inherited a corrupt, dysfunctional education system and will now hand it back more dysfunctional than it has ever been.

He made promises he never kept, he smiled and prostrated himself to those whom he had promised to fight. He turned his back to the very people who brought him to power when they needed him most.

And still he will do nothing, but modestly smile and play coy once more.

But as a 21-year-old having been born after a chaotic revolution, and raised in a bloody war, I am just weary of more bloodshed.

Democracy will not knock on our door tomorrow. Nor next year. My classmates can't even handle exchanging opposing points of view.

Fathers and sons still fight a more chaotic war in their own homes because they are simply incapable of considering for a moment what the other person has to say.

Our neighbourhood grocer sleeps until late afternoon because he knows there isn't another store for miles and we are desperate for supplies.

Ordinary people still think the little power they hold is to be misused against their own neighbours and countrymen.

Khatami rose at a time when people were going through a cultural shift. I was there to watch the newspapers flourish ... and wither away.

I was there to watch Bahram Beyzai's glorious play, Arash at Tehran's national arts centre. Never before had those hallways and dusty stages at Tehran's theatre seen art of that calibre.

If nothing else, Khatami gave us hope. And he disappointed us greatly afterwards.

But though the newspapers died and the theatre once again grew silent, it is not the sort of silence that signals death. We are simply waiting for them all to be reborn.

But for now, after eight years, we will at best be back to square one.

People lined up in their millions, frustrated by a president they saw as a representative of all that was wrong with this system — only to have him register his name as a top-notch candidate eight years later.

And before me now, I have the names and faces of the eight presidential candidates I will have to see much of this month.

The race has started. "May the best man win," people always say.

But sometimes, it doesn't make much of a difference.