Sorry posting shuddered to something of a halt in the past few days; shellshock has prevented much of anything from being said. We're still wandering around wondering just how this happened. What would it have taken? The US economy is still shaky, he's the first president to lose jobs for over seventy years, there's torture and human-rights abuses in Iraq and Cuba, excuse after excuse for invading evaporating, and 350 tons of high-explosives are now in the hands of terrorists. And the country still elected him.

The youth did turn out to vote, incidentally. More so than usual, and they were the group that went most to Kerry. So, when Bush passes his insane Social Security Bill, everybody aged between 18-29 should opt-out immediately, and laugh when the fund goes bankrupt shortly afterwards. That'll teach the seniors.

Oh, and today's weird, bewildering, and depressing statistic: apparently, 20% of gay people voted for Bush. (this is according to exit poll data, no idea how they got this figure - I guess they just asked, which could mean the real value is slightly different). That makes no sense.

The current theory as to why Kerry lost is that the Democrats didn't pay attention to the state amendments that were also being voted on. Gay marriage and stem cell bans were proposed in an effort to energise the more extreme ends of Bush's voting base. And it worked. (Greg Palast is still insisting that Kerry won Ohio, but he's probably the only one)

The sad thing is that it's been a lovely couple of days here apart from that. Being asked if I had voted everywhere I went on Tuesday, followed by a great night, with everybody here at Laura's apartment, watching the results and eating pokey sticks (the common phrase of the evening being: "I need another drink"). Lots of drunkenness (well, okay, there was really only one true drunk, but she was very entertaining!) to blot out the news coming in. Yesterday was very depressing; people were muttering to each other all over town, not believing what had happened. There was a protest organised for the evening, in case things went the same way as 2000. I went along, and it was just horrible; nobody had any heart for chanting or marching. We just felt like we'd had our hearts ripped out. And we will be staring at them for four more years.

But! The night got better! I watched Breakfast At Tiffany's with Laura and Rachel, I swear I didn't choose it, honest. We might also be off to see a movie or two in the next week, although we haven't decided on which one yet.

The sun has gone, but the weekend approaches…