Happy hour. A hearty hoppy beer might make things go right for a short while anyhow. Maybe even release the vise grip on my brain. This tension headache brought to you by your local, fucked up telecommunications service. No tv, then no internet, and no rhyme or reason. “We’ll overnight that modem to you, but it will take 3 to 5 business days.” What do you answer to that kind of math?
But at least it forced me to work at my favorite watering hole for some atmosphere, compared to my usual, dull writing environment: dusk-lit room, dilapidated desk over-cluttered, bed beckoning from behind my back, and puppy chewing on my bare feet as I try to focus on a screen that sometimes allows me to reach the world outside–when the internet hasn’t drifted in then out. Today, like yesterday, it’s all out.
And then there’s the election. It’s worse than anything I can remember in my public awareness age. Yes, even Watergate. This trumps all, pun intended. The banana republic antics. It’s hard to stomach any more. It’s like stupid times infinity, as we used to say. We’re sliding speedily down the ice hill in reverse. I can’t watch–but like that carnage on the side of the road, I must. No entertainment. All sadness and nausea. There’s an ache in the pit of my stomach that threatens to swallow my entire body, engulf it in burning bile.
Or is it just me? I can’t tell any more. As I look into the foamy, golden crystal ball of my immediate future, cold and wet to my clasped hands around its glassy trunk, I ask, “Is it just me?”
She answers from inside a beer bubble, “It’s always been just you.”
In the gaze of the other 
Funny you say that. My daughter sent me a clip of the very civilized JFK/Nixon debate from (whenever that was, 1960something) and it was amazing to watch. They were so polite, so refined, so NICE. It was about 7 minutes long or so. And then I snapped back to my senses and mentioned to my daughter that, yes, it was a lovely debate, with no mention of scandals or ugliness whatsoever, but then again Nixon was a horrible anti-Semite, among other rotten things, and JFK had women stashed in closets around the WH to have sex with as the mood took him. Two awful men who would be mercilessly trashed now all over Twitter if they were running for anything, and rightfully so.
Perhaps it’s the over exposure through the various media that makes this exhausting. We know too much too often. I do think there is a significant difference in tactics of the candidates and the behavior of the press this election also. There are far fewer reliable news sources than there were in the Nixon and Kennedy eras.