Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Because your butt does look fat in that personality disorder!”

Dear Polly,

To continue your dialogue with letter writer #1 a few weeks ago ( “don’t quit your day job,” etc.) and with a dude who wrote to you as “rabbit” way back when about his jealousy of his ex’s new musician boyfriend: I’m an editor at a little-read academic publication; the job is well-paying and provides excellent health insurance, I’m (very) good at it, and my boss is an awesome mentor who respects me and allows me autonomy — basically the jackpot.

Except that I think it’s lackluster and sort of embarrassing. Editing is something that almost no one except other editors — many of whom are petty, martyred, self-aggrandizing rule-sadists I do not relate to or want to be associated with — sees as valuable. It certainly has no cool factor. And worst of all, in my opinion, it involves being on the wrong, crappy, unfulfilling side of the desk. Like, “Those who can’t write, edit.” It seems like proof that, however incisive a critic or writing coach I may be, I’m just not creative (the better thing) anymore. (Before: precocious, English major, won poetry prizes, etc.)

(And — this shouldn’t bother me, but — my boyfriend is an up-and-coming humorist. His career successes involve things everybody can relate to and find cool: awesome jokes, interactions with famous people on Twitter, and, recently, getting offered a job writing for a nationally famous humor publication. He’s living the dream, he’s got proof from the universe that he has talent, he’s actually making stuff, and I am very, very jealous of him.)

Obviously I need to start writing again.

I’ve read Bird By Bird and Writing Down The Bones. People who love me tell me I “have something to say” and urge me to start already. I’ve practically memorized that Ira Glass quote about how if you keep slogging, your taste and output might eventually sort of line up.

But actually thinking about writing something just sends me running for eBay and muffins and neglected home-improvement projects, mainly because of the gigantic internal chorus of gremlins screaming, “YOU HAVE TO SHOW SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF BEFORE ANY MORE TIME PASSES! BY YOUR AGE, ZADIE SMITH HAD ALREADY PUBLISHED TWO INCREDIBLE NOVELS! IF YOU WERE REALLY A WRITER IT WOULD BE LIKE EVERYONE SAYS, WHERE YOU LITERALLY CAN’T SURVIVE WITHOUT WRITING OR JUST GO AROUND LIKE AN ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR TRIPPING OVER THINGS BECAUSE YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS, OR AT LEAST YOU WOULD HAVE AN IDEA FOR SOMETHING TO WRITE! UGH.” I’m so worried about writing as a way to trick out/fix my “lame” editor identity that I’m not actually writing.

When you wrote back to the jealous dude, you said: “I think you may be jealous of folk boy, because he’s unselfconscious about his art, however bad that art might be. Do you think you might want to be the guy with the guitar, instead of being the guy who takes the piss out of the guy with the guitar?”

GOD, YES, I want exactly to be that guy! How do I get from here to there?

With admiration,

Red Pen

Dear Red Pen,

Sweet Jesus, yes, I know how you feel. And I would appear to have an established, secure writing career (if anyone can really have such a thing, which, by the way, they can’t). Let’s just admit that writing is an act of extreme arrogance that usually ends in tears and dumped literary agents and piles of excruciatingly vague rejection letters. Writers are choosy beggars, always hoping for high-paying gigs and editors who love them unconditionally and readers who have cash in their pockets. (See also: Pleeeease go buy my memoir right now.) Hell, even the established, well-regarded novelists I know say things like, “I like to take a break between writing novels, because writing novels is pure fucking misery.” See, just reading that fills every ego-driven writer like me with self-loathing because, what, are we trudging through malarial mud in search of a few jugs of potable drinking water, here? No, we’re sitting on our soft asses hating ourselves for not being more genius-like. Cry me a river, chumps.

OK, sure, there are also writers who say spritely, peppy things about writing, but I don’t read their stuff because their writing sucks and I hate them.

Anyway: Muffins, eBay, home improvements. Yes, yes. I like to paint walls, or just purchase interesting shades of high-quality wall paint. I like to buy drought-tolerant plants, and plant them in the yard and then overwater them until they turn brown, which often tricks me into thinking they need even more water. I like to check mortgage rates, and consider refinancing, and then, just when I’m on a terrible deadline, set the refi process in motion, necessitating piles of paperwork and follow-up phone calls in which a busy stranger takes time out of his busy schedule to insult me for pretending like 1099 income doesn’t amount to a crumpled wad of Monopoly money. These procrastinatory activities should be included on one’s online dating profile. Instead of “Five Things I Can’t Live Without,” online daters should instead describe “How I Procrastinate Instead of Living a Meaningful Life.” Because unlike long walks on the beach and a love of roses and puppies and pizza and cuddling, procrastination methods actually do distinguish us from each other. I don’t know that many other people who could waste 3 hours comparing 15-year and 30-year mortgage amortization schedules.

Unfortunately, though, people who procrastinate too much seem to become drought-tolerant over the years. You weren’t tormented by your lack of meaningful productivity until you started dating a writer. Now you feel lame, even though you have a great job with great money and a great boss. We always undervalue what we’re naturally good at.

I can’t really craft the proper long-term plan for you. But I do know what your short-term plan should be: You should keep your job and you should start writing at least two hours a day, without fail, without a single thought to what it will get you.

That’s the crucial part of becoming a real writer: Accepting that the glory will never be glorious enough, no matter what, and that the words will never be brilliant enough. Never. The act of writing itself isn’t really arrogant. What’s arrogant is thinking that every word should be special. Making those words special takes hours and hours of grueling work. And even when they’re special, there is no glory, not really.

We find solace in muffins and amortization schedules because they wash away the ego-driven hunger for life-changing glory that’s just bad for us. When we subordinate our lives to gallons of wall paint and high-maintenance plants, we emerge less prone to self-aggrandizing spirals of self-flagellation. We are less ruled by ego-centrifugal forces.

Fuck us, without our giant stupid egos! This is why I love an existential crisis. Being dwarfed by the gigantic horribleness of death is helpful, the way watching your Leucadendron die (despite your clingy, psycho-chick love for it) is helpful. Maybe I have terrible impulses and shitty taste and no talent. So what should I do? Spend what little time I have struggling to conform to someone else’s idea of good writing? Dedicate my life to imitating other writers? How many unoriginal imitations of other people’s books are out there already? I might as well be a ghostwriter instead. At least that pays well. No. All I can do is write what I write, and struggle mightily to make it better.

You definitely want to write. You know this now, and you can thank your boyfriend for making that clear, with all of his torturous successes. Even if you hate writing and hate what you write, you still want to write. Write that somewhere, on your wall. Own it. Don’t apologize for it. Silence the inner editor. You need to make your own imperfect, crappy, overbearing, effusive writing matter to you. You have to take the worst possible stuff that you can produce — which, when you’re out of practice, is pretty much every word — and adore it like a high-maintenance plant, like a muffin. Try to divorce it from this negativity of yours, somehow. Rip it out of the “I’m lame” realm and shove it into the “I do this because I fucking likes it, that’s why!” realm. Start clumping together haphazard piles of words as a form of procrastination. Save every stupid word. Do it every day, and watch all the shitty writing pile up, and force yourself to love your own awful pseudo-literary excrement.

This is what I’m doing right now, with my mess of a novel, in spite of the millions of reasons not to. (#1,354: Does the world need another novel? Fuck no, it does not.) I have to believe, because I refuse to spend the next ten years sighing heavily over this particular creative dead-end. Writing a novel won’t justify my existence. But I’m happier when I’m doing it, even though I’m constantly stunned by how bad I am at it. Believing in it, in spite of its shittiness, feels worthwhile. As my 3-year-old says when she “uses the force” to open the garage door, “I know I can do it!”

And when you hear a little voice in your head saying “I know I can do it!”, you have to do what I do every time I hear a little voice in my driveway saying “I know I can do it!” (and I see a small person with closed eyes, straining both arms toward the closed garage door). You have to run like hell for the garage door opener — or in your case, the laptop.

I would prefer that my kids believe they can use the force for as long as possible. I would prefer to believe that I can use the fucking force, too. And so can you, goddamn it. So lean into your chosen delusions. Listen to the little voice, and obey it. Make fumbling with your shitty prose another one of your bad habits. Don’t act like the world depends on it, like you’re a loser if you don’t do it. Instead, try to make the process feel more like something that gives you sustenance. Treat it like eBay and muffins. What are you going to do, marry your successful writer boyfriend and NOT be a writer yourself? Behave like a jealous kid every time he succeeds at something? That’s nuts. Thanks to him, you’re stuck. Maybe that’s why you chose him in the first place. You have to become a writer now. You really don’t have a choice. I know you can do it!

Polly

Dear Polly,

About six months ago I met a man unlike any I’ve known before. He’s kind, generous, incredibly smart, funny, handsome, etc. etc. He’s also supportive and encourages me in my goals. I feel so comfortable and at ease with him which I’ve never felt with anyone before. The only problem — I’m 27 and he’s 47. He doesn’t seem or look it to me — he must have stayed out of the sun when he was younger. He got divorced about 3 years ago and has no kids. We love each other deeply.

So not the biggest deal, right? But I have this nagging fear about what the future holds. He’s open to the idea of kids, which I definitely want. But let’s say we have kids in ten years (when I imagine myself ready). Do I really want to make him a father at 57? He’d be 77 by the time this kid is 20! Also, am I willing to potentially be a widow by my late 50s? Of course there’s no guarantee that a younger man would live any longer, but it frightens me, Polly.

I guess my question is, if everything else about this relationship feels so “once in a lifetime” and unique, should I just live with the other stuff? No relationship can be perfect in every way… Are my fears reasonable? Maybe I’m just freaking out because I have this idea in my head of what the person I spend my life with is supposed to be like. But these feel like big caveats.

Oof.

Much Younger

Dear Much Younger,

Yes, this is where you would expect to find flowery talk about the glory of love, the magic of romance, the fact that age doesn’t matter. And sure, continue to gaze into each other’s eyes. Continue with the good sex and the midnight post-coital snacking. These things shall not be forsaken under any circumstances.

But my honest advice to you is that you shouldn’t commit to someone who is 20 years older than you if you really want children but don’t want to have them for another ten years. First of all, it’s unlikely that your boyfriend will want kids when he’s 57, even if he says he’s open to it now. It’s also unlikely that you’ll be thrilled about raising kids with someone approaching retirement. And even if you are, you shouldn’t be. Trust me. When your second child is two and potty training, and your 62-year-old husband is grouchily complaining that he can’t carry the kid to the potty at night without throwing his back out, you’re not going to be thinking, “Thank fucking God, I married my soulmate.”

If you are intent on having children, these are not irrational fears. These are concrete concerns.

And while we’re being annoyingly practical, let me also say that if you really want to have kids, plural, I would move up your ideal baby-making date to six to seven years from now, given the percentage of 38- to 42-year-old women I know who have successfully conceived a child. Yes, I’m a feminist. I know that the fear-mongering is fucking bullshit. But it would be messed up if I didn’t tell you what I’ve seen, which is lots of failed $30,000 IVF attempts among married urban hipster ladies who took their time.

So let’s be pragmatic here, without extinguishing your raw joy at having found someone special. You should savor this moment. You have lots of time. That said, you also have to promise yourself that you will bail if this man turns out to be a little bit less than wonderful. You have to guard against spending ten years with someone nice who doesn’t turn out to want kids that badly (or even with someone who is great but not really everything you hoped for). I don’t want you to wake up single at 39, wanting a completely different sort of a life than the one you have.

And keep this in mind: 40-something divorced men are generally much more lovable than men in their late 20s. Men get more sensitive and more interesting as they get older. They’re also more anxious to commit, and more excited about being in love. Your boyfriend’s intensity and romantic nature may seem less rare in a few years. Also? Women develop better taste in men when they’re right around your age. We start to like real support, and start to dislike being ignored (enough to actually stop dating people who are indifferent to us). You may find that you’re much more comfortable with men moving forward, whether it’s with this man or someone else. If I had to predict the future, I would guess that you will enjoy a happy two years with this guy, but you’ll both be ready to part ways by the time you’re 29. Nothing wrong with that, either! There are worse things than spending two years with an awesome older man who’s crazy about you.

But anything could happen. Maybe you’ll always be so happy with your boyfriend that you can’t imagine not being with him. Maybe he’ll make it crystal clear that he wants children with you no matter what. Maybe your life together will feel like a gift, every single fucking day. Maybe you’ll decide to have kids sooner rather than later, which isn’t the worst thing in the world to do, despite all evidence to the contrary. I know an older woman who dated a man two decades older than her, and she wouldn’t have replaced him with anyone else, ever. He was the absolute man of her dreams, and always will be. You may be in the same sort of relationship right now.

Either way, you’re young enough to have fun right now and do what you feel. But you’re also young enough to aim high, to imagine a surplus of good men, to go for the life of your dreams. As long as your boyfriend continues to feel like the absolute ideal partner, willing to have kids whenever you’re ready, willing to adjust to your vision, totally dedicated to your happiness, then that’s hard to step away from. I think if the relationship continues to feel amazing and special, you’re not going to be as tormented by the age difference moving forward. But if he’s even a little wishy-washy, or you’re even a little ambivalent, then don’t hesitate to move on. Do. Not. Hesitate. Your age difference does represent a major compromise. There’s no way around it. Try to be smart about that and don’t let the years race by while you accept less from your life than you really want or deserve.

Polly

Feeling mortal? Regretful? Blue? Write to Polly. She’ll know what to do!

Previously: Ask Polly: Is He Crazy, Or Am I?

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Laineys Repertoire.

There are all sorts of questions still surrounding the storm and its aftermath, and this is certainly not the most important query, but I still can’t help wondering: How are people without power masturbating now?

“Oh, it’s terrible in Manhattan, we can only imagine how awful it must be in Brooklyn,” Manhattan people were emailing the night of the storm, before they couldn’t really email any more. Yes: most of Brooklyn lost cable TV for about six hours. There were some twigs about on the broad sidewalks too. Although, the DVRs still played! So most Brooklynites didn’t notice much of a thing, outside of the devastation of Red Hook and some more localized disasters, except when Brooklyn was blinded by the Ghostbusters-like shooting lights of Manhattan’s power transformers exploding.

Now lots of downtown Manhattan hold-outs turned have-nots are refugees in Brooklyn — except for the likes of Lucy Sykes, who, somehow, chose to check into Soho House in the Meatpacking district, which is running on candles and flashlights. Now that’s the definition of a Manhattan die-hard, if you’d rather stay downtown somewhere without power instead of taking off for a lesser borough (or, Keith McNally forbid, uptown). Kudos.

But for less devoted people who live in TriBeCa or Soho, from the financial district through the Flatiron, the best choice was to take refuge with friends in Brooklyn. In Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, almost everything was open last night, and there was enough home-made burrata to go around. Well: barely! Buoyed in numbers by Manhattan refugees, most restaurants had hours-long waits last night. Smith Street was hopping. Awkward! Brooklyn smug never felt so cozy.

Over the last few years, the not really funny joke has been that Manhattan is the new Brooklyn. This time, it’s official.

The tide (so sorry) turned a long time ago against Manhattan. All but one of Gawker’s New York City-based writers live in Brooklyn — a borough that the site used to spit on just for fun as of a few years ago. And this will sound shocking to the youngs, but when older business-type people get together — the brokers and lawyers and even some of the finance folk — and someone reports that he lives in Brooklyn, the response is frank, hilarious horror. (“I live in Carroll Gardens,” one man in a suit recently said to another man in a suit in Manhattan, and the listener put his fingers to his lips and said “Shh!”) This is extra-funny, because now Brooklyn is too expensive for any of them to get in on at this late date, and the cost will be astronomical when they finally figure out that it’s exactly what they wanted all along. (Around the same time interest rates hit 8%, and us mortals shuffle off to… whatever’s after Brooklyn.)

Early this morning the heat came on in the brownstones with a gentle clank, awakening Brooklynites, whose third or fourth thought was surely of the poor un-showered people remaining in lower Manhattan. Now Brooklynites are finishing up their oodles of storm kale and letting their extra iPads decharge. After their third hand-crafted latte, they’ll start wondering when the storm’s houseguests are going to be able to push off back to poor old Manhattan.

Photo by Tanenhaus

“Wall Street turned to Bordeaux, sushi and faxes as Hurricane Sandy wreaked the most havoc in the history of the city’s transit system and closed stock markets on consecutive days for the first time for weather since 1888.” One of them even wore jeans to the office!

Don’t forget to set your clock back an hour at 2 AM on Sunday. If you have a working clock, that is. Or power of any kind. I’m not sure if this means more or less dark, but I have to imagine for a bunch of you it will still pretty much be all dark.

Photo by javarman, via Shutterstock

School cancelled tomorrow *commits suicide*

— Rumaan Alam (@Rumaan) October 30, 2012

If you’re a lucky New York City resident and you live in Brooklyn or north of Penn Station, you have power and TV. If you’re unlucky, you don’t have power, and everyone is getting petulant. If you’re way less lucky, there’s a tree through your living room and your basement is full of water, and I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope your cats are okay. Let me know if I can help!

So now we know it’ll be “days and days” until there is a subway again. Because it is filled with water and rats and water-bloated rat carcasses and electrical sparking. Like who knows how many days.

On the plus side: free MTA bus service on Tuesday and Wednesday, whenever it starts, circa 5 p.m. And there are “cars.”

But for most of us, no one’s going anywhere anytime soon. And that is… stressful. (Not stressful like your building being surrounded by water and actual howling winds! But stressful like “Maybe I will divorce you or maybe I will kill my roommates, time will tell.”)

And if you have kids, they have no school until at least Thursday. And you already want to kill them. Which is reasonable. We told you not to have kids, but no one listens, and here you are. Give them all the iPads. Consult our Netflix list. But then what? Whatever can you do?

SEND THE ANNOYING PEOPLE IN YOUR HOUSE OUT ON PHONE-CHARGING DUTY.

Didn’t get AT&T service until I walked to 27th. Didn’t see power until 39th. This the scene 39th–63rd at every ATM twitter.com/ohnorosco/stat…

— Ross Miller (@ohnorosco) October 30, 2012

WORK OUT AND EAT.

going stir crazy so doing @carolinefitness workout videos online before i go back to the cookie jar #sandy

— sarah kunst (@sarahkunst) October 30, 2012

USE A PAYPHONE FOR RETRO GROSSOUT THRILLS.

How bad is the power outage? Bad enough that I used a New York City PAY PHONE this morning. My skin is still crawling.

— Jessica Coen (@jessicacoen) October 30, 2012

OUT SOME TROLLS.

Christ, what a scumbag. RT @jwherrman: The real person behind @comfortablysmug, hurricane Sandy’s worst online troll gofwd.tumblr.com/post/346403217…

— Adam Frucci (@frucci) October 30, 2012

GO SEE SOME ART?

All Gagosians New York are open today, Tue, Oct 30. Hope everyone in NYC is safe. Now go see some art! fb.me/1Ojqceb3s

— Gagosian Gallery (@Gagosian) October 30, 2012

HARASS MITT ROMNEY ABOUT FEMA.

Pool reporter at Romney campaign event asked 5 times if he would eliminate FEMA/how he’d handle agency. “He ignored the questions.”

— Ram Ramgopal (@RamCNN) October 30, 2012

Doesn’t matter: this storm and his views on FEMA are going to be the nail in his coffin.

SURE, ALSO, RIGHT: DONATE.

Red Cross tells us grateful for Romney donation but prefer people send money or donate blood dont collect goods NOT best way to help #Sandy

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) October 30, 2012

OR PHONE BANK FROM HOME.

You don’t have to leave your home to volunteer for @barackobama. Sign up for an online phone bank shift today: OFA.BO/i3yuxM

— Brian Dennert (@dennert) October 30, 2012

EXTRA PRO TIPS:

• Just keep making up errands for them to get out of the house. “I HEARD THERE ARE FREE SANDWICHES 19 BLOCKS AWAY, GO GET ONE.”

• Force your children and/or roommates to finally learn how to cook food themselves. Start with “pasta” because they need to learn about boiling water.

• Learn a language together. (JK, don’t learn anything. That’s as bad as “reading a book.”) But hey, if you’re the person who trained your child to be quiet with an iPad, this is all your fault.

• Here are the rules for every card game ever.

• Or of course you could just lock yourself up in your room and/or a closet, and get working on your novel.

• WHAT ELSE? Tell everyone on your Tumblr somewhere else.

by Ana Marie Cox And Jason Linkins

The Annotated White House Flickr Feed continues with another special Election 2012 edition (you’ll find the previous installment here). Here are The Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox and Huffington Post political reporter Jason Linkins to compare the campaigns. When did the Romney team learn about Instagram? How long till they also hear about “autofocus”? How many windbreakers does Paul Ryan own? And who does John Sununu hate more: Barack Obama or Lena Dunham?

ANA MARIE: So, they’re INSTAGRAMMING or something now.

JASON: This image, is like at Ahmadinejad levels of obvious Photoshop fakeness.

ANA MARIE: Sort of like Romney’s tan.

JASON: The way they cut up and spread out the interior of this pavilion makes it look IMPOSSIBLE. Like the geometry described by those asylum night watchmen that are always going crazy in H.P. Lovecraft novels.

ANA MARIE: Maybe this is why their tax plan doesn’t add up?

JASON: It makes perfect sense to Shub-Niggurath!

ANA MARIE: You have to live in the interdimensions. BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.

ANA MARIE: More INSTAGRAMMING. Welcome to 2009, Mitt Romney campaign.
It looks a little like they’re doing a very tentative dance step. Like, “I’m going to try a dip, are you ready to dip? I PROMISE I WON’T DROP YOU. No, really.”

JASON: Romney is like, “Wow. That peach cobbler is really going to my head.” Turns out the secret ingredient is ecstasy.

ANA MARIE: Instagram lets Romney make photos look like they come from the era he thinks he’s campaigning in! You can use all the sepia tint you want, though, these people are still pretty white.

JASON: Honest question: does Paul Ryan not own another windbreaker?

ANA MARIE: THRIFTINESS. Probably owns ten of the same one, though.

JASON: I should have thought of that.

ANA MARIE: Not sure what the joke there is… he’s just a grim and merciless motherfucker, no time to shop for things that “different from one another.” Has the same view of policy: same Randian hammer for every fucking nail.

ANA MARIE: This just makes me sad. Gives me a sad so hard. And I’m just talking about their hair.

JASON: Yeah, I got that immediately. You don’t think puffy vests are going to make a comeback in the Romney administration, do you?

ANA MARIE: Well, with the oceans rising.

JASON: But Romney has such MOMENTUM.

ANA MARIE: He has two of these ladies feeling it!

JASON: Yeah, the David Freed lady is just, “Meh, whatever.”

ANA MARIE: Is it a Nevada thing I’m not getting? Mustaches for Mitt?

JASON: It’s the Nevada-UNLV football game. The mustaches are associated with the UNLV “Runnin’ Rebels.”

ANA MARIE: There is something really wrong here but I kind of like it.

ANA MARIE: Oh look, it’s the Solid Gold Dancers.

JASON: Those are some of the least R&B; people I’ve ever seen.

ANA MARIE: Someone thought it was important to capture the presence of nuns.

JASON: This image shows a lot of diversity. Because there are some nuns, and there is also a guy with a soul patch.

ANA MARIE: Not a demographic that’s going to be swayed by that Lena Dunham video, I’m thinking. By which I mean, not the guy with the soul patch. The nuns may think twice.

JASON: Yeah. Though I think the Lena Dunham video is pitched directly at the obvious “head of your company’s HR department” that’s checking his iPhone in the argyles. You know, the Romney team still hasn’t mastered the idea that crowd shots are best when they capture people actually doing something exciting.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of which…

ANA MARIE: Here are some people praying.

JASON: Oh, that’s not prayer! That guy is a hypnotist and in a minute he’s gonna wake them all up and they’ll think they are giraffes!

And then Romney comes in with his “Are the trees too high? Or are they just the right height?”
It kills.

ANA MARIE: Whatever you do, don’t make them think they’re black! Because then they’ll vote for Obama, which is what black people do. Because they’re black.

JASON: I want someone to hypnotize John Sununu into thinking he’s black. That would be hysterical. Or Jamie Foxx and John Sununu could star in some Freaky Friday shit.

ANA MARIE: If Sununu was black, now THEN you’d see some voter intimidation. John Sununu thinks the Black Panthers bully white people into voting for Obama because that’s what HE would do.

JASON: LOL. John Sununu would be a great white version of Madea.

ANA MARIE: The only way you could make John Sununu more unattractive would be to make him into John Tyler Sununu Perry.

ANA MARIE: This is either S.E. Cupp or Lisa Loeb. Either way, someone left a napkin on the couch.

JASON: Again, Pete Souza is DYING inside, thinking that he could be replaced by whoever is talking these pictures.

ANA MARIE: “Just… focus? Could you learn to focus? I will teach you! Composition can come later!”

JASON: Souza would never allow that napkin to be in the shot.

ANA MARIE: Souza would never allow anything in that picture. That picture would be obscured by blood drawn by Souza’s own hand before he’d allow that to be shown to anyone.

ANA MARIE: Pete Souza, CRYING.

JASON: But they were so excited a minute ago?

ANA MARIE: “Let’s just watch teevee.”

JASON: Romney and that woman are having a “pretend we are in the crowd at a Romney event” contest.

ANA MARIE: I get this “we’ve been having an affair for so long it’s as boring as our marriages” vibe from those pictures.

JASON: Yeah, this is sort of ICE STORMY.

ANA MARIE: Right? Right down to the armchairs.

ANA MARIE: OMG HOSTAGE VIDEO! Seriously, I don’t want to make “future spree killer” jokes but FUTURE SPREE KILLER.

JASON: Yeah, I think that guy pretty much lives in a found footage horror movie.

ANA MARIE: “Hello, Paranormal Activity 5 casting? I have found your plot and star for you.”

JASON: Let’s do some photos from the Obama campaign photostream.

ANA MARIE: I’m going to warn you now: I’ve paged through these a little and there are quite a few shots of a teary Joe Biden hugging people. Which I imagine is just what every day is like for him, now.

ANA MARIE: This sort of sums up the different approaches the two campaigns seem to be taking to their Flickr feeds. Romney: “PEOPLE ARE EXCITED ABOUT US, REALLY.” Obama: “Here’s some cool shit. Enjoy.”

JASON: Yeah, I think Obama campaign understands that even if they don’t win, that doesn’t mean they can’t provide Jeff Tweedy with some great album covers.

ANA MARIE: Well, if all we get out of an Obama loss is a heart-wrenching new album from The National, at least I’ll be able to mourn to a good soundtrack.

JASON: SO TRUE.

ANA MARIE: Man, all the great work the despairing pro-Obama musicians could produce… versus, what, Kid Rock crying?

JASON: This campaign is basically BLOODBUZZ, OHIO.

ANA MARIE: “I still owe money to the money to the money I owe.”

JASON: I will be wearing my Bloodbuzz Ohio shirt on election night. There’s no better crash years anthem than that.

ANA MARIE: I do sort of love that The National campaigns for Obama, because their stuff really gets people hopeful, right?

JASON: Right! GET PUMPED, HERE’S THE NATIONAL!!!

ANA MARIE: They play music like he’s already lost.

JASON: They play music like everyone’s already lost.

ANA MARIE: I do love the massive “indie rockers for Obama” movement. Mac McCaughan is basically meeting with Axelrod daily at this point.

JASON: Sadly, I think Obama lost Conor Oberst. Though Oberst is kind of the Buzz Bissinger of indie rock.

ANA MARIE: “Horses and Bayonets” is a clear play for the Decemberists.

ANA MARIE: SO THIS IS HOW HE THROWS DOWN NOW? FOR REAL? In mom pants, like a mom?

JASON: This is another Obama basketball photo that doesn’t present his game in the best light. Pretty daring thing to do to a guy who has got aerial combat drones at his beck and call.

ANA MARIE: I suspect campaign/administration coordination. This is Souzian.

JASON: Yep. Reflections. But Souza would have gotten them into a better composition. This would have looked like RESERVOIR DOGS or something.

ANA MARIE: Again, an instructive photo for the Romney campaign. AND THAT GUY, I LIKE that guy…

ANA MARIE: …because here he is again.

JASON: Yes. It’s like the secret to this sort of photography is to wait until people are actually doing something to take their picture. And focus the shot, get it in the proper light, remove stray pieces of trash…

ANA MARIE: FOCUS. JUST FUCKING FOCUS. There are cameras that do that automatically now?

ANA MARIE: And THIS is how you do a poignant minority supporter shot, Mitt Romney Campaign. First: he is holding a flag, not a homemade hostage message. Second, there is light in his eyes as opposed to being dead inside.

JASON: Could he be actually eating the flag? It’s ambiguous.

ANA MARIE: He, like Lena Dunham, wants America INSIDE HIM.

JASON: Now matter how you look at it, this picture is trolling John Sununu pretty hard.

ANA MARIE: Basically Obama’s existence is a massive Sununu troll.

ANA MARIE: Obama seems like he’s laughing at private joke of some kind.

JASON: Hopefully it’s not about these ladies’ “first time.” By which I mean “fucking.”

ANA MARIE: I was going to go there, too. Hard not to!

JASON: Sex jokes make Erick Erickson cry. Only because he’s never properly brought his wife to orgasm.

ANA MARIE: OMG, I loved his tweet about the Dunham ad. What was it? Something about a fallen planet, doomed to fire? I SAW THAT MOVIE.

★★★★★ The wind pinned the rain against the north windows. A field of droplets stood there, unmoving, then darted a few inches in unison, one way or another or another, before locking in place again. On the west windows, the drops were being slashed into tiny dotted lines, splattered across the glass in every direction, meeting at angles like constellation maps. The building creaked and groaned from all sides, like an old sailing ship. The building is two years old and was built without any discernible timber. Down on the streets, cars and taxis were still going, for quite a while, and people in rain slickers were out. A pickup truck drove by below, with leafy tree branches piled in it. Whitecaps were rolling over on the Hudson.

The creaking and groaning intensified; acoustical phantoms stalked the apartment. My wife went next door to visit the neighbors, and yet while she was gone, from the empty bedroom, came the sound of her moving about. Pops and shifts of pressure. From the neighbors’ window, she reported on returning, they could see the broken and dangling crane at 57th Street. The reflection of the floor lamp in our living-room window flexed and wobbled, the whole glass wall heaving in place. Day was going, and the peak of the storm was arriving.

On with the rain slicker. The elevator made a shrieking, scraping sound on its descent. The rain, just out the doors — honestly, it had rained harder than that earlier this month. But small branches and twigs and leaves lay everywhere, everywhere. The quantity said what the size might not. Somewhere west of West End, the foreboding gave way to the actual. The door of the cold-season vestibule on an expensive preschool banged open and shut, over and over. An unplaceable, lungless wailing was carrying high in the air, from Trumpville or Riverside South. The steps and rampway down to the river were taped off, and ten or so figures had gathered on the overlook, hoods up, backs to the wind and facing the water. From there, we could see tiny, even stupider figures still out on the pier. The river was the color of milky tea, whipped with froth. It rode up to the tops of the rock emplacements, onto the intact upper steel of the old ruined railroad bridge. Waves splattered clear over the concrete walls.

There’s a moment, out in a real, consequential storm, when you are reminded why you are not supposed to be out in it, that this is something more powerful than the powers by which you normally live and abide. In Floyd, in ’99, I made a circuit of the flooding pond behind our garden apartment, watching the sprightly wood ducks ride the torrent, before a gust of wind cut my leg out from under me on the soggy grass. Same rain slicker that day. I do cherish those ducks, but the memory is right beside the feeling of going sideways, beyond control. We had just watched a police SUV cruise down the pier, lights flashing, the foolhardy trailing back toward shore in belated obedience, when a new blast of wind hit the overlook. My knees buckled; the tree beside me was rocking in the ground. For a long moment, there was nothing more or else to do but brace and hold. When that moment passed, there was nothing to do but retreat, face-first into the no longer insubstantial rain.

The rain had soaked all the way through the pants, but the socks were mostly dry. Tunnels were flooding, according to the Internet. The power was failing. Manhattan had gone entirely dark, Twitter said, proving for all that the view of New York is now the view from Brooklyn. Past that darkened edge of Midtown, outside our windows, the buildings were lit up as ever, allowing for an occasional flicker. Or two. Three. With the brightest flashlight resting nearby, the older boy got his bath. I tucked him into his bed, beside the window. After another two hours or so of listening to the creaking and cracking, of trying to watch facade-collapse video on what was left of the Internet, I brushed my teeth, scooted him over, and lay down on the outside.

The reason that people make so much out of the rising of the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn is that 1. it is a cesspool of horror and 2. its banks are the most prime site for development in all of Brooklyn: miles of ancient warehouses, trash yards, parking lots and storage, just waiting to be luxury condos. Luxury condos… that will fill up with poop and cadmium every time there’s a storm surge. Here’s what happened last night, when high tide came. The canal overflooded so much that it drowned the bridges, and the entire block surrounding, turning Bond Street into a river, and beginning to march up to Hoyt Street. The grounds of the enormous forthcoming Whole Foods only flooded mildly last night! Enjoy that.

This video was taken facing Park Slope, from Third Street — and while standing uphill from Bond, which was entirely underwater. If you can make it out, there are two cars underwater, atop the Third Street Bridge — which is one of only three high-trafficked paths across the Gowanus.

A natural disaster is a time for class, dignity, exchange of news instead of rumor (ahem, oh well) and a sense of humor where warranted. (Everyone’s mileage will vary on what’s funny and when, of course. One mild ill-timed joke, and you’re the most-hated person on Twitter.) With millions of people without power, low-lying areas flooded and some generally scary stuff going on, it’s a little tense! The good news is, here in New York City most workplaces are being sensible with their employees — I mean, they kind of have to be, given that no one can go anywhere, what with every subway tunnel flooded.

But then there’s bad taste and bad priorities — and ill will.

For starters, there were the rumor-mongers and liars, who got thrills out of spreading disinformation.

And then? This deleted New York Post tweet above, screenshotted here by Bro Pair, certainly takes the stupid cake. (It’s also nonsensical, psycho axe-grinding; likely that’s a picture from the East Village.)

And then there’s Gawker chief Nick Denton, who was among Internet honchos who engages a data center in downtown Manhattan, which, unshockingly to anyone who’s read a weather report in the last five days, didn’t make it. (The rest of us made data center preparations; even then, some of us went down after midnight.) Denton sent an all-staff memo at 9:50 p.m. last night, well after his sites went down, and they remain down: “If you’re working tonight and tomorrow and the sites are still not back: post on Twitter and Facebook. (That is if you still have internet and power yourself.)” Um, why? Why on earth should the staff bother? (One argument: “because they get a paycheck.” One counterargument to that: because they just got hosed on the employee traffic bonus system, during a major news event, due to forces beyond their control.)