‘We’re live with people standing in line. Did we mention we’re live?’

By David McElroy · November 8, 2016

It’s late afternoon on election day 2016. The Status Quo News Network has live coverage:

Anchor: We now take you live to another random voting location that happens to be near the bar where our crew will be hanging out later tonight. Luther?

Reporter: Biff, I am standing live in front of a line of voters at Bluff Heights Elementary School in suburban Atlanta. After a hard-fought election, things are tense. Mr. Voter, could you tell me why you’ve come out on this historic day.

Voter: Well, I’m here to vote.

Reporter: And there you have it, Biff. He’s here to vote.

Voter: The wife and me are going to Waffle House after this. Did you need to know that, too?

Reporter: Biff, they’re going to Waffle House after this. We have that as an exclusive.

Anchor: Luther, it appears people are standing in line there. Are these patriotic Americans standing in line?

Reporter: Yes, Biff, they are. I am told there was a line when they got here — since everybody other than us is getting off work about now — so they have to stand in line while they wait. Some of them are veterans. They’re here to vote and they will stand in line until they do. God bless America.

Voter: We don’t mind none. The Waffle House looked full when we drove by, so we got to wait anyway.

Anchor: Luther, there are a lot of white people there. Does this mean Donald Trump is winning?

Reporter: As one voter left, he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Make American Grate Again,” and it had a picture of cheese on it, so we take that as a clear indication this is Trump country but we don’t know what the cheese meant.

Anchor: And now we go to one of our hateful, partisan studio analysts to fill some time since there’s nothing to actually report. Lloyd, what did you see there?

Analyst: Biff, there were clearly people standing in line and I saw several of them wearing blue shirts. This election is a slam-dunk for Hillary Clinton based on what I see here.

Anchor: Why were they willing to stand in line, Lloyd?

Analyst: When I ran for school body president in high school, we had a table in the hall where people had to line up to wait to vote. That’s what this reminds me of, Biff. Those voters in high school loved me, so they lined up to vote. Just like I’ve been telling you for weeks, these voters love Hillary, so they’re lining up. They’re with her.

Anchor: Did you win your election, Lloyd?

Analyst: No, I didn’t, Biff, but it was rigged and I will never forgive the snide creatures who voted for Bobby Jackson. He was stupid but he was quarterback for the football team.

Anchor: They really stood in line, Lloyd? At a high school? Is that legal?

Analyst: We didn’t have Justice Department observers for that election, which probably explains why Bobby Jackson won. He got Juanita Jennings to go out with him after he won, too. I could have married that girl if the Justice Department had been there.

Anchor: I’ve just been told we need to cut away for some breaking news. Live at Donald Trump headquarters, our reporter has confirmed that the top campaign staff has ordered pizza for dinner. What does this mean? Are they standing in line, too? After we get the details, we’ll be back for analysis and much more. Please keep watching our ads. Don’t turn the channel. In a moment, we’re going live to Trump headquarters. This is live. Did we mention it’s live breaking news? When we come back, Brenda will tell us which toppings the Trump staff got for their pizza and Lloyd will explain what this means about who’s winning. Stay with the Status Quo News Network for more exciting news. Did we mention we’re live?

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Six years ago this evening, a scared young dog came to live with me. She was so terrified on the ride to my house that she pooped in the back seat of the car. She had originally lived her life on a chain as a puppy. Then she lived among far too many other animals in a cramped apartment, where she was pushed around by bigger dogs. I was told she would always be a “special needs dog” and would probably never be much more than the scared girl she was then. But with a lot of love and patience, a very different dog emerged in the coming months. Now that she’s been with me for six years, it’s hard to imagine her any way other than she is today — as the World’s Happiest Dog®. One day, she’s going to tell her own story on her own podcast. You’ll subscribe when she gets started, won’t you? This loving girl deserves it.

It was obvious to me in the late 1990s that western society is heading toward social and economic collapse. When I told other people back then, most thought I was crazy, because they saw their society as stable and booming. But more and more people have slowly been coming to the same conclusion. And now, even the wealthy and powerful seem concerned. A new report from the World Economic Forum says the erosion of “social cohesion” is what we should fear right now. (Full report here.) Although I disagree with a lot of political spin that these elites put on the dangers ahead, I feel certain that we are headed toward social collapse. And most people will not prepare for it. The book that started me down the road of thinking about this came out in 1993. I thought its reasoning was impeccable, but that the time frame would be longer than the book expected. I still find that book a useful foundation for thinking about the issue — “The Great Reckoning,” by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg — even though its predictions are out of date. Dark days are coming. Smart people are going to have a plan to get out of the way of what’s coming. Will you?

Since I posted my audio discussion a couple of nights ago about some recent realizations I’ve had about myself, several people have asked for more about what I quoted from Jordan Peterson. The Canadian psychologist is controversial to some — and I don’t always agree with him — but I’ve found his lectures about art and its relation to psychological archetypes very useful. You can find him here talking about art being more about process than just result, which contains the material I quoted. Here’s another video from a lecture in which he discusses how artists mediate for the rest of society between the known and the unknown. And here’s another portion of a lecture at an art exhibition in which he talks about the necessity of artists for society. And if you missed my audio from two nights ago, here’s a link to my discussion about some things I’ve learned about myself and some things I need to change about myself as a result.

I just realized it was four years ago today when I came uncomfortably close to dying. I don’t remember how blunt I was publicly about this at the time, but the surgeon who operated on me made it clear afterward that I had been much worse than he had thought. My gallbladder was inflamed and I had been in tremendous pain, but what the doctors didn’t know until they started is that the organ was close to rupturing. Surgery that was supposed to take half an hour took two or three hours, because my gallbladder was so diseased — the surgeon’s word — was falling apart as he tried to remove it. I had gone to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital (the same one where I was born) and was kept for emergency surgery the next morning. I should have been home that night, but I had to stay in the hospital three days instead. The weird thing is that I never really believed I could have died. Maybe it was just denial, but I didn’t feel as though it was my time. I thought I still had a lot of life left to live. Four years later, I’m grateful to be alive, but I feel as though my life is still on pause. It’s been a blur. I still feel as though I’m waiting for “the rest of my life” to start.

Is “The Nightmare Before Christmas” really a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? It’s both, making it a delightful mashup of themes and images from two very different holidays. Although Danny Elfman’s score was nominated for several different awards, Elfman wasn’t a typical composer for film scores. Up until he started working on films with Tim Burton, Elfman had been a rock-and-roll artist best known as the leader of the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the 1980s. Just this week, I heard an interview on the podcast Song Exploder on which Elfman explains how he came to write the music for the movie, including why he approached the music for the film very differently than he had approached writing rock music. I enjoyed the 20-minute interview and if you happen to love the film, this Christmas would be the perfect time to learn more about how the score came to be. Tap or click below to listen. Listen here.

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