It’s been a week since the surreal realization came to me that Donald Trump would become the 45^th President of the United States, an outcome that seemed about as likely as Harlan County, Kentucky, being named by Condé Nast Traveler as one of the top resort destinations in the world.

By the way, I don’t personally believe in the 5 stages of grief.  Although Trump’s victory surprised me, there was no denying it (step 1).  Not only did the headlines scream it, but the faces of my colleagues at work wore a degree of despondency I hadn’t seen since I walked the streets of Leningrad in ’89.

Nope, there was no denying it, nor, for that matter, any relief in getting pissed off (step 2).  I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird.  I can “crawl” into Trump supporters’ skin and see things from their perspective (fear of the Big Bad Other), even if I can’t figure out why lower middle class service employees want to end the estate tax or why rust belt denizens believe Trump has their backs when he’s admitted he’d grab their daughters’ “pussies” if he found them attractive.  Bargaining (step 3)?  With whom?  Satan?  No thanks.  I’ve seen Faustus (Richard Burton) dragged off to hell in that ‘60s movie, and it’s not a pretty sight.

No, I’ve skipped those first three steps and have settled into the 4^th stage, Depression with a capital D.

To combat the existential-horrorshow-country-going-to-be-run-by-an-incompetent- megalomaniac-too-slothful-to-even-bother-getting-a-transition-team-going blues, I’m boycotting political media, drowning my sorrows in high gravity IPAs, and assuming fetal position every night at 9:00 pm in hopes of attaining at least a fitful version of sleep.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Come to think of it, a vacation to Harlan County might not be such a bad idea after all. It suits my state of mind.

** FILE ** In this Nov. 5, 2008 file photo, Bruce Springsteen plays his guitar in New York. On Wednesday, Feb. 4 , 2009 Springsteen said he was furious with Ticketmaster calling its selling practices a “conflict of interest” after complaints that the vendor was redirecting fans to a more expensive ticket seller owned by the company. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, file) NY128

As I write this at 8:07 EST on Election Day of 2016, I feel obligated to throw out a couple of clichés, for we couldn’t really exist without clichés.  Without clichés, we’d have to be always original, which would exhaust us, and I’m pretty much always exhausted anyway.

Cliché #1: “This is the most important election in our lifetime.”

You hear this cliché every election, even during the 2012 presidential election, which featured two very rational Christians with opposing economic views, who, by the way, had both ushered through a program to provide healthcare to their constituencies.

This election, on the other hand, pits two very different people against one another, one, a rationalist, the other, a megalomaniacal Exposed Nerve of Spasmodic Resentment.

So this time around, the cliché is valid: this is the most important election in our lifetimes.

For whatever reason, many people tend to despise Hillary Clinton.  Part of this antipathy, I think, is the product of a long history of [cliché alert] hatchet jobs perpetrated by the Far Right, which dredged up the White Water non-scandal, accused her of murdering Vince Foster, and now of being funded by the same people who bankroll ISIS. If you keep hearing over and over accusations of misconduct, you eventually come to believe that a person accused of so many misdeeds must be dishonest.

Plus, her being an uppity woman doesn’t help

Of course, it’s not as if Clinton doesn’t possess flaws.  She’s calculating (viz. the Iran war vote) and can pay fast and loose with the facts, as we’ve seen with the private email server; however, when it comes to mendacity, ain’t no politician I’ve ever encountered can [cliché alert] hold a candle to Donald J Trump.  Here’s a handy link in case you doubt it.

What terrifies me most about Trump is his disdain for democratic institutions.  According to the New York Times, he’s contemplating creating a Super Pac to fund entities dedicated to avenge people who opposed him during this election. In other words, he’s assembling an enemies’ list. If he were to be in charge of the executive branch, and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, he would be in position to actually make his radical ideas reality by building a wall, deporting millions, establishing a religious test for immigrants.  I can see him embracing rogue agents of the FBI and colluding with Putin, emulating him by ruling our Republic as if he were a mafia don, in other words, turning the US into a thugrocacy.

Cliché #2:  Today’s election is the only poll that matters/turnout will determine the outcome.

Well, duh.

So here are the choices.

1. Stay home reading the collected poems of Ezra Pound.

2. Embrace self-sanctity and vote for Jill Stein. As you watch the Dow plummet with Trump’s election and your retirement savings [cliché alert] go up in smoke, at least you can go to sleep at night knowing you were true to your ideology.

3. Vote for Gary Johnson. Ditto the Dow and your retirement savings.  So what if he thinks Aleppo is subgenre of Jamaican ska,  wants to abolish the fed, favors banning student loans and allowing people on no-fly lists to keep their assault weapons!

4. Emulate Ted Nugent and vote for Donald J Trump.

5. Emulate Bruce Springsteen and vote for Hillary R Clinton.

6. Emigrate to Costa Rica, Ireland, Portugal, etc.

One last cliché:  The choice, fellow Americans, is yours.

I’ve resigned myself to a Trump victory and the subsequent dismantling of our democracy, have been relentlessly seeking a corrupt apothecary willing to sell me some suicide pills to swallow after the conclusion of my show trial and subsequent sentencing.

After the inauguration, I suspect that one of Trump’s first acts will be an executive order calling for the construction of hundreds of gulags, and he’ll award the contracts to Trump Inc. (creating thousands of jobs!).

Lefty bloggers like I-and-I will be forced to don baggy gray prisoner garb and compelled to spend our days performing backbreaking manual labor. We’re talking deep dystopia, fellow doomsters, a shitshow world that will make Orwell’s Eurasia look like a Club Med resort in Capri.

So while the getting’s still good, I thought I’d take advantage of my First Amendment right of freedom of speech and for one last time mock Trump and his minions.

[cue Pete Seeger] Where Has All the Irony Gone?

In the Age of Irony, how is it possible for Trump to have triumphed?  In a land where every late night host is as sardonic as Jonathan Swift, the nation has turned to a despot whose sense of irony robust as Lenin’s corpse.

It’s mind boggling.

Dig this: Just yesterday, in her thick immigrant accent [cough, cough], mechanically looking back and forth from teleprompter to teleprompter as if she were watching a ping pong match in super slo-mo, Melania Trump spoke out against cyber bullying – CYBER BULLYING!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240462265680289792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

And also yesterday, the Emperor of Orange announced

“I think I have the best temperament or certainly one of the best temperaments of anybody that’s ever run for the office of president. Ever. Because I have a winning temperament. I know how to win.”

And here’s Kellyanne Faustina Conway, who swapped her soul for book royalties.  Certainly, if she were to write a truthful account of the inner workings of the Trump campaign, she would find herself alongside Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell in one of those above-mentioned gulags.

No sense of irony here:

And then the Trump supporters themselves, impervious to irony:  Hillary’s dishonest; you can’t trust her.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Seth Meyers.

Hey, Seth.  I know this corrupt apothecary you might want to contact

You know Juliet’s famous question and answer:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

True, it would, but on the other hand, if a rose went by the name ort[1], it might not seem to smell as sweet – you purchase a dozen red orts for your love; life is certainly no bed of orts; may I introduce you to my fiancée, Ortmarie?

Because I’m so attuned to the auditory essences of words, it sometimes surprises the combination of sounds parents choose when naming their newborns.

Take the name Michaela Loeb Krawcheck, for example.

Although Michaela’s a lovely name and Michaela Krawcheck’s okay, the first and last names don’t meld well the the spondaic middle name Loeb. It’s too much of a mouthful. Plus, your tongue has to go on a rollercoaster ride up and down the palate to spit it out.

No doubt Loeb is a family name, and homage is being paid.  Here’s an alternative: Lila Loeb Krawcheck.  Or ditch the Loeb and go Americana with Michaela Lou Krawcheck, or if that’s too low rent for your taste, Michaela Louise Krawcheck.  If my last name were Krawcheck, I might go all out with Michaela Loquacia Krawcheck, copping a rhyme with the twin trisyllabic first and second names.

Now, you’re talking.

However, most people are more visual than auditory, and of course, most names have origins, which people may be interested in karmically copping, e.g., Lucas = light-giving, as in lucent (or Lucifer).

Here’s a small sampling of newborn names that are trending in 2016.  First, let’s check out female names cited by the website baby center.

Romance is on the rise:  Amelia, Olivia, Gabriella, Ariana, and Camila are hot names for newborn girls in ’16.  Very Shakespearean.

What I call soap opera names, gender-neutral surnames, remain popular. Among them Addison, Brooklyn, Peyton, and Sydney.  These names suggest old money, whether there’s any or not.

One last trend features rather old-fashioned names like Sadie, Ruby, and Hazel, which is interesting because my grandmother was named Hazel, and she had two sisters, Ruby and Pearl.  No Sapphires, however. I certainly hope girls who receive these names are blessed with beauty.  A homely Hazel or sadsack Sadie might be better off as an Addison or a Brroklyn.

Okay.  What’s happening on the Y-chromosome side of the ledger.

Switching to the mom 365 website, we find they actually have the boys’ names ranked according to popularity.  Here’s the top ten: Noah, Liam, Mason, Michael, Elijah, Jacob, Ethan, James, Aiden, Benjamin.

What in the world are Michael, Jacob, James, and Benjamin doing in there?  I know some Mikes, Jims, Jakes, and Bens, though I suspect that none of these names will be shortened if the school where I teach is any indicator.  Michaels are not rare there, but you’ll never encounter a Mike under 30.

Of all the names I ran across in my cursory research, the hot trending name that most caught my eye was Jagger.  It sounds cool.  It conjures cavorting Mick.  But, like I say, make sure it goes well with the other names.  John Jagger Jones sounds a lot better than Jagger Tate Garbowski.

Oh yeah, here are a few names not trending in 2016:

Jezebel

Lucretia

Ellie Mae

Hulga

Adolph

Ebenezer

Esau

Onan

[1] Actually, ort is the Anglo-Saxon word for table scrap.