31

Today I enter my thirties in my own right. I know it's my birthday because in the last 24 hours Stephen Harper has resigned his seat in Parliament (after waiting MONTHS, I might add), Donald Trump continues to tank in the electoral college, and Anthony Weiner has been caught in yet another sext scandal.

There's no way those events just get randomly thrown together, all willy-nilly. This is the Universe's way of telling me that it may be cold and indifferent, but every now and then - every now and then - it's still good for a laugh. Of course, on the same day it gave us all of this it also took away Gene Wilder. So perhaps it's good for a laugh so long as it's a suitably nervous one.

It's been a rotten year, since the very beginning. I'm not saying David Bowie held the universe together but every day since his death has been at least a little shittier than the day before, and it's hard not to think the whole of existence just flailing out of control without his presence to steady it. There's no need to deny this, we all know it to be true.

Whether it's failing health, finished relationships, the passing of countless icons, the interminable rise of Donald Trump through the primary and the nonsense chaos of the general election campaign, or the growing malaise that comes from realizing that the new Star Trek movies are here to stay and that both MacGuyver and Lethal Weapon are slated for television remakes, it's hard to believe we are living anywhere other than the End Times.

So we have to take comfort in the little things that make each moment special, like hitting a patient friend at 100 yards with a water balloon by surprise in the middle of a summer's day, or a cheap but tasty bottle of Bordeaux. Personally, I'm getting through this tough period with deep prayer and introspective abstinence cheap drugs and the thought that after all these years and all of these essentially identical scandals, someone still lets Anthony Weiner have his own phone.

Fuck me, you might as well let a toddler run around with a stun gun.

I mean, honestly, how hard is it to NOT send pictures of your genitals to people? Especially when you're a has-been public figure married to a still-is public figure? Especially when you have an embarrassing and career-ending history of doing this exact thing? Especially when your very name is Weiner?

Jesus, maybe he's just trolling us. You know, building up hype for his new TLC reality show called Weiner's Schtick or some other dumb bullshit. The man needs to be put out to pasture.

At any rate, watching the former-future-Mayor-of-New-York-City casually fuck up yet again is exactly the kind of thing that's going to get us through 2016 (that, or more pictures of Bill Clinton kicking over-sized balloons on a convention stage), and God willing it'll either be better next year or Trump will win the election and none of us will be alive to make the comparison.

At any rate I suppose I will have a Happy Birthday.

Baited and Agitated

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I've got to beware

So there I was: sitting in a kayak on a lake as smooth as glass with the ashes of a cigarillo slowly burning my swim trunks, spraying terrified seagulls with my high-powered watergun and laughing like a madman. Sometimes you have to get back in touch with nature to restore your vital energies, you know?

After the seagulls had all fled I found myself face-to-face with a great blue heron, the king of the lake, who did not look the least bit intimidated. I nodded at him, hoping to assure him that I sought nothing more than the merciless torment of the gulls, and he returned a look that said I probably didn't belong here. I was surrounded: to my right the screeching chaos of the birdbrain gulls smashing into each other as they fled, to the left the cool and calm hunter, waiting patiently for exactly the right moment to strike with total effectiveness.

Almost immediately the heron snapped up a massive fish not twenty feet from my paddle, and bit it clean in half before sauntering off. It was a damned majestic sight and it stuck with me as I drifted back to shore for fresh beer and a dip.

Don't worry, my lovely little devils - I haven't forgotten about you.

I've just needed a few days to recover. The first week of the General Election campaign left me jabbering like an imbecile and exhausting my supply of Emergency Bordeaux, the bottles I usually hide from myself and save for times of occasion. I needed to get out of the city and in some fresh air.

For most of the last four years I've been preparing spiritually, emotionally, and mentally for this campaign. I have predictions and charts and graphs covering every possible election-related topic from the history of the electoral college by state to estimating one's own blood alcohol level by the offensiveness of obscenities hurled at cable news.

I thought I was ready for it. I thought it was possible for someone - anyone - to be ready for it. Still I was left completely unable to finish basic sentences without shouting "Fuck!", at random intervals and at an uncontrollable volume while falling down in a fit. What fools we've been!

No more. Getting stoned in the sun and watching gorgeous women tan in white bikinis was exactly what the doctor ordered: This is going to be a disjointed mess but I am BACK, by God, and boy have we got some things to talk about.

The Democratic National Convention was relatively straightforward. It was never going to be as exciting as the Republicans', we all knew that, in the same way that a kitchen supply store simply isn't as exciting as a fireworks factory exploding underneath a kennel of puppies. Suffice it to say the Democrats managed to draw the kind of comparisons they needed: it was about Us, We, and The Team, not a gaudy cult of personality. There was enough hope and optimism to keeps jaded saps like me in love with the idea of America, rather than the doom and gloom weltschmertz and isolationist paranoia that makes the rest of us very nervous.

Clinton put in exactly the kind of safe, predictable performance we've come to expect from her and the convention laid out exactly why she's eminently qualified to be President. Not two days after the convention ended, like some time-delayed mind bomb, I found myself acknowledging the stunning revelation that I've actually come to like Hillary Clinton over the course of the two conventions in her own right, and not just in contrast to a man who only qualifies as a featherweight because the bloated, distended pig's anus he uses for a mouth is full of dense shit weighing him down. This woman is going to be President; she has to be.

And that is really all I have to say about the DNC, apart from how much we're going to miss Diamond Joe Biden when he's no longer the free world's coolest Uncle, telling us how things can be a Big Fucking Deal while slipping us a first beer and teaching us how to roll a joint. Tim Kaine seems too responsible for something like that but at least his aw-shucks personality is just as genuine.

So as the DNC wrapped up I thought about writing a piece about The Pivot - the changes to expect that now that the primary season is officially over and the campaigning starts in earnest. I thought I would be writing about changes in tone or the start of what will surely be the most intense air war in the history of paid advertising, or perhaps the hum-drum mechanics of horse-race politics.

When the first day of the general election began with the revelation that the wife of the candidate from the right wing values party of Genitally Obsessed Prudes had done nude photo-shoots during her modeling career which, in a twist of irony so delicious as to be sickening, may have been a violation of her immigration visa at the time (ho ho!), I was ready. Maybe I'd write a cheeky piece about my coming to terms with the near certainty that I either have or shortly will stare at nude photos of a potential future First Lady, or an ode to pornography for all of the gifts it gives us, or just a snide comment that he'd have to put a wall up around the East Wing of the White House if he won.

But before I could even set off, disaster: America's pungent corpse flowers are all blooming at once, the headlines say. Jesus, tell me about it.

It's a struggle just to keep up with the rapid pace at which Donald Trump fires new volleys into his own foot and reloads before firing again. Every time I start to write about the latest outrage some new thing pops up and knocks it straight back into obscurity.

There was the week long feud with the family of a dead soldier, during which a doped-up Ben Carson (which is to say, Ben Carson) demanded that the Khans be the ones to apologize, while Rat Fucker Roger Stone claimed that the family where members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Trump said that he, like the Khans, had made a lot of sacrifices for this country - which is true, I suppose...when you've got that much hot air in your head being a billionaire draft dodger probably feels just like losing your son to war. "I always wanted a Purple Heart!" the candidate exclaimed like a hyperactive toddler, as someone handed him the medal given to soldiers wounded in combat, "This was much easier."

Then he kicked a mother out of a rally and proclaimed that he hated babies, which I had to rewatch four times to make sure it wasn't the drugs or a stroke putting those words in my mouth. I know I try to be creative, but everything in that paragraph actually happened and I had to go for a walk to keep from choking on my own spittle.

Then there was the time he and his son said women allow themselves to be sexually harassed, and that strong personalities (like Ivanka's) simply don't submit to it. I'm not sure where that child fu-[The remainder of this paragraph has been withheld due to offensive language and legal considerations pending the outcome of Donald Trump's multiple sexual assault allegations, but can be summarized as: The author finds Mr. Trump's position on the subject incredulous and makes several speculative remarks about the nature of his relationship with his daughter. -The Editor]

After that it was no surprise he's pivoted to dangerous nonsense like claiming the election will be rigged against him and threatening to skip the debates. Dark shit like this is what fuels the wilderness survivalist types who want to wage a terrorist war against the federal government, and even as I write this I'm watching him pretend he didn't suggest America's collection of gun nuts take a shot at his opponent. You can run your company like a banana republic all you want, Donald, but you keep that shit out of it. Now he's saying that CNN's story on the scandal, which featured the spokesperson from the United States Secret Service saying they were looking into his comments, was just made up drivel to boost ratings. Mother of God.

At least Paul Ryan is standing by him, because the part of Paul Ryan's brain capable of independent thought has been removed and turned into a Trump Steak. Even after the Republican candidate for President spent a few days adamantly refusing to endorse the Republican Speaker in his Primary campaign - an egregious sin in the team-sport of partisan politics - Ryan's still meekly going along with everything he says and does. I find his comments ludicrous, offensive, and unworthy of America, he seems to be screaming with his eyes. But of course I support our party's nominee. Chris Christie and Paul Ryan must be fast friends by now, sharing the same closet under Trump's stairs, and one testicle between them.

Through it all, the polls - (rigged when they show Trump losing, of course) have the Republican ticket more or less collapsing. It looks like the Democrats have a real chance at winning Georgia, South Carolina, and Arizona. It's a five-point race in Utah and Texas (Texas! Pretty much the only state where Republicans can get any Electoral College votes!) and with any luck, a good Democratic campaign may unleash a truly devastating defeat and puts an end to the Sixth Party System.

This certainly seems to be what we're getting, at least for now: Clinton, Kaine, the other-Clinton and other high profile Democratic surrogates are everywhere, campaigning in places they'd probably fear to tread if this were any other election. A new entrant is getting in the game as independent but with the backing of some old GOP figures. Republican Senators and Congressmen are abandoning ship, and meanwhile Donald Trump goes to Michigan to fatuously sneer at the need for government regulations in a place where the air is almost as poisonous as the water before exploding in a fit of uncontrollable squawking that ends up threatening to destroy the Republic itself while his Vice Presidential nominee apologizes quietly for him.

This was the first week, and as I write there are some 88 days left in the campaign. Buckle up, folks.