Alive, Dead or Bloody Furious

When this blog is dug up in a thousand years, when the weight of years has accumulated all around it and leeched into it the sort of accidental gravitas we now assign to coprolites and some earthenware pot some dirtbag Neanderthal dropped one time, I think this period of time--between an election happening and the results being known--will be of especial interest. We're perched here on the fifth of November, the end of the second full day since the polls closed, and though we can see where things are trending, we're in a Schrödinger's Electoral Space where we are both bursting out of a period of chaos and mismanagement and nestling deeper under the suffocating peat of chaos and mismanagement which, like all good peat, is made of rotting things and misery. We're both things at once. Which multiverse we're in we won't know until someone opens the box. And in this case, apparently the box is shaped a lot like Nevada.

How does it feel? It feels pretty bad, man. Even though it looks like my candidate is going to win and rescue my feeble, consumptive soul from four more years of cognitive and moral punishment that so deprives it of agency and expression that the crisis feels not just existential, but positively metaphysical? Yes. But not "even though;" especially because.

I'm sorry, the stakes are just too fucking high. And look, if you scraped through this blog's history and the blog history of my one before this one, it is JUST POSSIBLE you could find similarly melodramatic arm-wavings and pearl-clutchings. But this time I completely mean it! Yeah, George W. Bush still sucked and he was definitely, objectively the worst president of my lifetime to that point, but it's not hyperbolic to imagine someone has come along just eight short years later and proven to be much worse and in much more dangerous ways. Trump hasn't completely blown up another country for no reason, that is true, I will give him that. But he has seemed to be very interested in blowing up this one, which is concerning as this is the one where I keep all my stuff.

I'll ask myself again: what does it feel like? It feels like sandpaper. Everywhere. All the time. Maybe it's my pronity in the direction of anxiety that primes my receptors to thus receive, but I find myself moving delicately through the world, certain that rubbing up against anything challenging or at speed is going to do me harm. And then it's the vigilance demanded by that kind of full-blast sensitivity that leaves me preoccupied, alert and worn out all at the same time. That's all just internally. Externally I'm sure it comes across as a super fun version of distraction punctuated only occasionally by static blasts of barking irritability.

Right now everybody kind of sucks. The people who support the opposition suck (whichever side you're on) because they are obviously Doing It Wrong. The people who support your side kind of suck because the last thing you want to talk about right now is the fucking election for one more second dear god why can't it just be over finally fucking Nevada what are you even doing...

I wanted to write something better and smarter, but I don't have a full handle on myself, I'll be honest. Right now what's getting most of us through are the little things that bring us pleasure in the moment like maybe carbs or sugar or caffeine or (if you're not me) alcohol or weed, or friends and family... to the extent that's still allowed as we are DEFINITELY STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING PANDEMIC OH MY GOD. So sex is mostly off the table if you're unpartnered, but at least, however it goes, if nothing else, you could always get a full handle on yourself. For a few minutes at least.