(856) 772-7669‬: TEXT OR LEAVE A VOICEMAIL W/ YOUR QUESTION, COMMENT OR COMPLAINT - THX

💨🤢
   K E Y:  ✄= art ✎= lit ♪= music ✪= video;  = highly recommended content

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

At least Bill Belichick is happy


IT'S DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTATE WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT. BUT I'M GONNA TRY AS HARD AS I CAN.

Donald Trump is President of the United States of America. A reality TV show personality who wants to have sex with his own daughter is the commander-in-chief. Whoops! This is insane to me, as I'm sure it's insane to many, but––AT THE END OF THE DAY––it's not such a big deal.


To tell ya the truth, and this is gonna sound like a brag but whatever: I totally thought this could happen, and right up until the pussy video, I would've bet on it. But as these things go, myself, Las Vegas and presumptively the rest of the country had come to their senses. Trump was as big an underdog in a presidential election as there had ever been.

[NOTE: I realize that if you don't bet on sports these numbers I'm about to post won't mean much, so hover over the red arrows for an explainer.]

In the week or so leading up to election day, Clinton was steady at around -550^. Trump was hovering as a +450^ underdog. These are fairly staggering odds, but before it fell apart for Clinton, they actually got even crazier.

When I checked Sportsbook.com at ~7-7:30PM, the odds were Clinton -650^ and Trump +600^. This was––frankly––nutzo. For a comparison, the biggest underdog this week in the NFL is the San Francisco 49ers who are 13.5-point underdogs at the Arizona Cardinals. (This is actually perhaps one of the largest, if not the largest spreads all season in the NFL.) The price for the 49ers winning the game outright is +700^, or just a shade more unlikely than Trump winning the presidency. But as crazy, if not 'predictable' (more on this in a moment) as a Clinton victory seemed/literally felt like was actually happening in the moment, the collapse and betting reversal was ______. (There are no words, imo.)

I voted for HRC. And I did so very much begrudgingly. No part of my being felt good about that vote. I find her highly unlikeable, distrustful and generally robotic. I didn't want another Clinton as much as I didn't want another Bush. I openly tossed around the idea of voting for Jill Stein. But towards the end of this shitshow, I reckoned with the fact that the only outcome I really gave a shit about was Donald Trump not winning. So I did my part here in Pennsylvania. I assumed there would be 100,000s if not millions of people just like me. I was wrong.

You know who else was wrong? Nate Silver, The New York Times, pretty much any media entity in existence… So, WHAT THE FUCK? How did years and years of supposedly perfecting data science and projections analysis lead us to this abomination:

Official NY Times "Live Presidential Forecast" - LOL ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?


I really have no idea how/why this happened. Not Trump winning; I totally saw that coming (hover over the next little red arrow if you want to read my thoughts on USA Presidential Charisma Theory™^). But how were all these projections / Vegas so horrifically off? Were that many million of people voting for Trump in secret and just flat out lying on all these pre-election and exit polls? It's baffling and a tad unsettling.

BUT IT WAS ALSO REALITY.

Clinton's odds started to nosedive around ~9PM. When the numbers became EVEN money on both sides^, I finally just made my move and sunk some dough on Trump. Eleven fucking dollars. No biggie. I should've bet every penny I have. But part of me didn't want to believe this was actually happening.

But it was happening. It happened.

…President Donald Trump LMFAO.



Make no mistake, Trump won this election because of Hillary Clinton. If Joe Biden––or, insert a handful of other possible candidates (I would even put Bernie on this list although I don't think it's a no-brainer)––had been running, I feel like the electoral results are reversed. We thought people would cast a Clinton vote as a "Welp, I can't vote for Trump" vote, but instead they casted Trump votes because Hillary Clinton was just that unlikeable. I don't think most of these people are racist, hateful or dangerous. I think they just believe in the two-party system and, shit, ya gotta vote for one of the two. Such is the way this thing works, and has always worked.

I'm not a politics guy. Obama was/will be President for ~2,920 days. Of those days, how many times did I think about / consider the presidency and/or politics in general? Maybe 19. TOPS. That's less than 1% of the days (MATH). So my ultimate response to this whole thing is: whatevz. If this is truly the disaster some are saying it is then I feel horrible for the people's lives it will impact negatively. This includes my own, potentially. My only advice (and it's not good advice) is to just live your life as absurdly as possible. I took a photograph of something on the ground this morning in the rain on my street. Wanna see it? OK:


You know what? FUCK IT. I think this might be AWESOME for culture and art and creativity. Donald Trump will try very hard to crush our collective spirit by "making America great again" but he won't be able to do it. The wild and weird just need to keep pushing forward in the other direction. I believe in us. There's no greater indication that We The People™ are bigger than and better than our flawed political system than the 2016 Election.

Duncan Trussell posted this video on Twitter last night as it became clear what was happening. And it's a great song with some great advice. I love everybody.