Waiting For Three Ghosts

The box of wine is open, the ribs are marinating, the television is playing one of the best Christmas movies ever (I refer, of course, to Eyes Wide Shut), and I am sitting in my chair swigging brandy in a leopard-print housecoat with a pair of reindeer antlers.

Holiday traditions are important, right?

New Axioms

Fuck me, that was a tough beat.

I've been in a daze since election night, finding myself wandering around aimlessly like it's The Day After and we're all victims of a catastrophic nuclear war. It's probably good practice for the real thing, I suppose, in case my streak of bad luck continues and I don't get vaporized instantly.

The news from the transition team holed up in Trump tower over the last two weeks is enough to convince even the most lighthearted and well adjusted optimist to drink himself to death in the corner of a dark room, all while Hillary Clinton's popular vote advantage continues to grow and it becomes increasingly evident that she will still never be President despite amassing more votes than any of the white men to ever run for that job.

Jesus, an incredibly tough beat.

That is not to say that I'm convinced Clinton will join the ranks of George McGovern or Al Gore as one of the Greatest Presidents America Never Had, but when you consider that their failures just left us to contend with Richard Nixon and George W Bush it feels like they got it easy. Dick and Dubya were crooks and fools, offensive in their own right, but the clouds lowering on us this inauguration day are some horrifying new thing indeed.

To be honest, the results were less depressing for me than they were disappointing. I've long been an American Enthusiast who held that there was a trust - a faith - that came from the stirring oratory of Lincoln or Kennedy or Sorkin, that our neighbors may be zany from time to time but they were, on the whole, a genuinely good and well-intentioned people. "If there is hope," a much younger and more foolish version of myself once wrote a million years ago, "it lies in the voters." Well so much for that, ho ho!

As it happens, this election has bereft me of that trust, and I fear it has left me for good. I've lost the faith, it seems, and that's been the most disturbing feeling of all to reconcile. True, as the white trash descendant of other working class white trash, I'm not unsympathetic to the voters who felt alienated by a triumphalist Democratic campaign seemingly tone deaf to their experience....but to hitch their wagon to the star of a compulsively lying abusive egomaniac? It's unconscionable, and I am completely unable to empathize with anyone willing to throw their lot in with the Reichsleitung of the American Nazi Party.

In fact, it's become impossible for me to shake off the feeling that this is the twilight of the age of liberal democracy itself. Eight years of progress - and so much more besides - are about to be wiped out by the DC Chapter of the Klan, backed and enabled by hopped up little weasels like Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus. In all likelihood, we are living in what will be remembered - at best - as the start of a lost decade that will be the subject of books written for the next century...assuming the written word survives that long.

At any rate, the repercussions of this election will be felt by everyone. The world turns its lonely eyes to Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel as perhaps the last vestiges of sanity and good government left in this world, but already synagogues, mosques, and black churches across Canada have been vandalized. Marine LePen is re-energized in the Presidential polls in France. The unchecked racial aggression unleashed after Brexit continues unabated as Theresa May sits at Number Ten and unprecedented, wide scale harassment of anyone who looks vaguely brown has exploded across entire continents. It's all coming apart at the seams.

Enough.

Enough mourning. Enough uncertain confusion. Enough complacency. I should confess something perverse to you now, dear readers, before we go any further: in addition to the depression and disappointment and malaise, there's a small part of me that's excited, aroused even; spoiling for a fight. The Bush-43 era helped me discover and define my own liberalism, and now some deep part within me has been given new purpose.

Perhaps it's an opportune combination of time, experience, and not caring if an aggravated alt-right shithead from Twitter wants to try and blow up my car (joke's on him, I don't own a car), or perhaps it's the potential to feel useful again. Whatever it is, I am suddenly energized. When Clinton was going to be the next President of the United States we stood on the verge of a new golden age in liberalism, but now it turns out we're going to have to go back to fighting for it.

So let's fight, then. There's nothing I enjoy more than a good righteous shout in the dark, and frankly the more outnumbered I am the better I feel doing it. It's time for courage, grit, and new battle cries. These people are either monsters or in league with them and they deserve nothing less than for us to hound them to their graves, oh yes indeed.

If There Is Hope, he wrote, It Lies In The Voters

[Editor's Note: Unfortunately we are unable to definitely establish the authorship of this piece as we have not been able to establish contact with Mr. Mills for several weeks. Our intern Alfonso was able to barter under a locked door with a sobbing man we assume to be the author for this Public Service Announcement, trading it for a copy of the National Enquirer, stale pizza, and fresh lube]

We have finally arrived, it's finally happening: After two years and about seven billion (!!!) dollars the General Election of the United States is upon us.

For a political junkie this is four years worth of Christmases and Birthdays all rolled into one. Cable news outlets have been perfecting their insane graphics packages for weeks, bets have been made, bars rented, and cigars cut. The lights, the sounds, the magic walls and interactive maps...to the wretched souls like myself who are chemically dependent on it, election night coverage is as satisfying as an addict's first hit of heroin or an Obsessive-Compulsive stepping into a NASA Clean Room.

I still retain enough human DNA to feel the same way about this interminable election as anyone else, and to be ready for it to end so I can finally sleep. And yet the end of this campaign still feels like the end of my entire way of life, the whole year has been building to this point and now it's come; soon it will be gone. It's going to be hard to imagine life without a new daily campaign scandal or feverish poll update...like suddenly waking in a foreign country where you don't have a home or a job or speak the language.

So I suppose wherever you find yourself tonight while the returns are coming in, cherish it. Let all the high definition mayhem and excitement fondle your primate amygdala and be dazzled. Hell, you should probably do your best to enjoy it since it might be the last chance we ever get to see one of these.

Make no mistake, Friend, the winner of today's Presidential election will either be an incredibly and uniquely qualified political professional with decades of experience or a deflated sack consisting of the worst Twitter trolls brought to life; the kind that spew Infowars-style nonsense about Reptillian body snatchers and declare all opposition either cucks, cunts, or "the REAL racists!". Whatever success the Trump campaign sees tonight - win or lose - will be the inevitable byproduct of a country full of nominally normal and reasonably intelligent humans, who simply can not be trusted as a society to hold rational conversations about subjects like guns, healthcare, or immigration. It no longer seems possible to have a serious and important conversation about public policy without at least half of the country threatening to murder or rape the other half.

This would all be fine, funny even, if it was taking place in some tiny, far flung eastern European republic with zany ways and a quirky culture, but America is too deeply embedded in the very heart of the rest of us for the effects to be detached and separate...to just be a silly tragedy that's happening to other people. I'm not sure I can live in a world where Donald Trump can win the Presidency. Surely such a victory would render the West irrelevant, and mark final decline of liberal democracy.

To be honest I wasn't sure a universe where such a blowhard could even get the nomination of major party deserved to exist, but at least it looked like he was headed for a thorough thumping in the electoral college then. Until a week ago. Now it's a crap shoot, good God.

Ah, but I'm jaded and cynical. The media circus is at full volume, the pundits have been out in force, and a thug like Donald Trump is now what passes for a politician.

If there is hope it lies in the voters. If. If you can vote in this election then DO. If you can't, then hold your loved ones close and stock up on canned goods. I, having spent the weekend preparing my body with vegetables, quiet meditation and prayer, intend to debauch to excess until I collapse, spent and exhausted (if this is the end of Civilization than I intend for it to be an ending with some magnificence - like the fall of Rome, if only those poor saps had perfected chemical stimulants and extra large nachos).

I'm going to need to get it all completely out of my system before I can start to rebuild my life and find new meaning, assuming there is new meaning to be found and we don't just wake up in the hellish reality TV show that would be a Trump Presidency.

If there is hope it lies in the voters, yes. But only if they vote.

Final Terrors

Yes, I admit that it sometimes takes me a month to pound out a quick update on the state of global affairs, but I have a good excuse: I've been putting together my Halloween decorations.


Meet Ted.
Say what you will about the fact that I'm a neurotic and antisocial drug-addled alcoholic with few prospects and no hope of ever leading a normal life, but I still know how to scare the shit out of people.

Children are terrified by his triple chins and beady eyes, which are ghoulish enough to make your blood run cold; adults are mortified at the prospect that he'll marry off their younglings to his new pussy grabbing best friend, Donald Trump. The cat is terrified every time his balloon head explodes.

Unlike the real life version - which is full of misery, human excrement, and the pompous ambitions of a sophomore debating team captain - my Ted Cruz is made up mostly of towels and string. The ingredients have been stuffed into one of the fat-guy suits from my closet 50lbs ago, and the head is full of hot air. I suppose in that respect it isn't completely different from the original (ho ho!).

It has been clear for some time that this election is so bizarre and beyond the realm of normal that the usual coping mechanisms - gin, cigarettes, relentless masturbation - simply can't keep up with the increasing ferocity and continuous intensity of the campaign. It seems that self destructive physical violence is required to keep from going completely mad. So I've myself a stress relieving punching bag and placed in my desk chair so it can dutifully phone bank for the Fascist candidate for President.

My God - is it not astounding? As soon as Ted "the principled morally righteous conservative candidate" Cruz endorsed Trump, down came the other shoe. Recordings of Trump talking about groping women (and a squadron of women corroborating his bragging) were perhaps the single most damaging events of this election, having finally shown white men in swing states that Trump has, in fact, been this offensive the whole time.

But it's not just the "locker room" talk that's tanking the Republican campaign: confusing and disjointed debate performances, a serious shortfall in organization and fundraising, and the propensity for Trump to latch on to something - Paul Ryan, Miss Universe contenders, the Washington Post - like a mad dog and shake until Kellyanne Conway can get Chris Christie to sit on him and calm him down, all contribute to the most self-destructive political behavior in living memory.

So the crowds are starting to thin out, and the staff are starting to disappear. There are still 16 days left before the election, but it's hard to see how Trump pulls the show out of its tailspin before it hits the ground hard and bursts into spectacular flames. The debates are now finished, and he's handily lost all three of them. His organization is pulling out of states where a Republican should be competitive, while Clinton is putting new money (at the end of October!) into places like Indiana and Missouri...and is polling within the margins in Texas even as I write this.

New, lurid stories of sexual assaults now flood the news everyday and Trump seems to have finally slipped over the edge, existing now entirely in his own dimension that not even his running mate or campaign manager or children seem to be able to see. No wonder the RNC has decided to stop spending money on him - mounting a desperate attempt to salvage the Senate and House instead, and many GOP candidates in both of those races are desperately trying to saw off whatever limbs they still have handcuffed to the Presidential ticket they have spent years building.

At least there's only two weeks to go; the home stretch of a 3 year long marathon. Then we can pick up the pieces of our broken hearts and American dreams, and chuck them into the fire along with the rest of this year's disappointments.

Rotten To The Core

Imagine having to go through life as Ted Cruz.

I mean really: Waking up every morning into a world full of people who hate your rotten guts, where your allies think the world would be a better place if you were dead and your enemies revile you so much they made Donald Trump their nominee for President.

It must be just terrible for your twisted reptilian brain to constantly spend time thinking about how all decent people cross the street to avoid eye contact with you, but will stand and cheer when you're eventually horsewhipped naked on the floor of the United States Senate, and knowing - deep down in the place we keep just for our innermost thoughts - that they're completely right to do so, and that you'll come crawling back for more.

What a goddamned Human Turdbag; the man has no backbone - no skeleton or structure to speak of at all. He's just a sack full of shit and grease and shame.

It must be even harder to go through life being married to him. Jesus, somebody's married to him!

I'm almost sorry for Heidi (or at least the kids). Their family life became a subject of lewd conversation after Trump set his tabloid-owning ratfuckers on their marriage. When Trump threatened to "spill the beans" (whatever that meant) and tweeted unflattering pictures of her, we watched her husband fiercely call Trump out as though he really knew how to play the role of a Great Protector. It must have hurt to watch an elderly father and grandfather get dragged through Trump's tabloids himself in the bizarre, feverish JFK conspiracy theory the Republican nominee repeated with delight.

Indeed, it must have made it a proud moment in the Cruz household every time Ted used his well-practiced steely eye on the camera and threaten to whip it out on national television over the latest personal insult from Donald Trump.

And surely it felt more than a little vindicating for the Cruz family to watch a Republican Convention full of hopped-up fascists and brain-dead D-list internet trolls jeer and boo as he struggled to save the shattered remains of his party's soul by encouraging them to vote their conscience - as if any of them had a conscience to begin with. He almost managed to emerge from that catastrophrovention as a doomed hero, giving the last dire warning before complete electoral defeat.

Ah! But the horserace has a tendency to turn heroes into sniveling villains and the certain doom isn't quite as certain now, so yesterday Ted Cruz oozed out of his obscurity of the past few months to endorse Donald Trump before presumably being sent off to be fitted with a gimp suit. Maybe this at least means Chris Christie is no longer the lowest bitch in the harem and can finally move out from under the staircase.

For the last of the unplucked Republicans this is the sort of betrayal they surely must have expected from the Human Turdbag. But his wife? His father? His children? How do you spend a year being subjected to the vilest insults from the vilest Presidential candidate in living memory and then pretend it never happened and everything is fine when there isn't even any political advantage to gain by it?

All this from within the party of "family values" to boot. Hah! There's more honor and family loyalty among starving rats.

You burned the bridges both ways, you fucker, and this is going to hound you. It'll hound you until the day you die and there's a bipartisan petition to dump your body in the sewer.

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.