The day after the November election I was a bit shellshocked. I hadn’t slept much, and rolled into work even more quiet than usual. I could hardly look strangers in the face. I was ashamed and distressed, and worried about people I know, and the millions of Americans I don’t know but who are going to suffer the consequences of this epically bad result.

I slipped away from work for a little while around lunchtime and walked down the National Mall. I’ve been there hundreds of times, but it always reminds me of childhood trips to DC where I would try to make my Dad drag me to every museum in one day (along with the zoo, and maybe a civil war battlefield on the drive to or from the city). I looked at some artwork at the wonderful Hirschorn and wondered who the patrons there voted for. I nodded, subdued, to the security guards and gift-shop cashiers, thinking about how the next administration might affect their livelihoods and families.

I was down, but I didn’t feel hopeless. I was invigorated a bit by the art and the inspiring monuments; beauty and ideals will endure. And it seemed to me that Donald Trump came from so far outside of political norms that he might, in the end, be a mildly successful president. He wasn’t beholden to the Republican party and their terrible, dumb ideologies. He seems mostly to care about popularity and success, which doesn’t sound especially bad.

[ … ]

There was a pretty great line-up a couple weeks back on a Thursday the 9th at the 930 — Ted Leo and the Pharmacists , Obits , and Screaming Females . I knew the Screaming Females only by reputation. I’d already seen Obits twice in the past year. And I have seen Ted Leo like a million times. So in a way I really wanted to see them in inverse order, but I had some social obligations and ended up missing Screaming Females, unfortunately. But I wasn’t about to miss Obits. What a kick-ass rock band! …

Ted Leo on 3/30 was pretty rocking. I have been a fan since the old days, and the last time I saw Ted was at Operation : Ceasefire , a huge antiwar rally a couple years ago, and I didn’t really enjoy it. That was my first Ted Leo concert in several years, since before I left the country in 2002, and in the meantime he had gained a whole new contingent of fans who were a lot younger. Which is fine. But weird. And it annoyed me at the protest, because there were speakers talking about the war and …

All of the best things in life are silly. Most of the reasons to keep on living are absurd. The most striking and touching and humbling parts of human existence make no sense whatsoever. We’re all irrational, stumbling through life, bumping up against one another and muddling through. It’s pretty awesome, in both the slangy meaning of the term and in the sense of “inspiring awe.” We find power and majesty in the unlikeliest places, and I reckon it doesn’t really matter where your source of inspi…

Last week I spent a lot of time listening to Minus the Bear. I’ve only ever had a burned copy of their CD Highly Refined Pirates , and listening it to work was very amusing because the song titles pop up automatically, and I hadn’t known what they were before. But I spent some time thinking about “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse” and mentally comparing it to other songs on similar themes, and how they relate to my life. So today I am gonna chart out a review and comparison of three fab…