...at the University Chronicle. Here's just one example.

America has spoken, and my ears hurt.Not only did George W. Bush retain the presidency of the United States, but both the House and the Senate have now fallen to the wrath of a Republican majority.

Here's another:

Yesterday, I heard the storm sirens being tested on campus. Even though it was a calm, sunny day, the sirens seemed appropriate to me, in fact, the only thing that I've seen or heard today that's felt even remotely appropriate.

A little less than a month ago, someone very close to me died. The weekend of the funeral, nothing was appropriate. Not the jokes that everyone told. Not the kind words that everyone said.

But when someone dies, the most infuriating thing is how the world keeps spinning on its axis, how the universe fails to acknowledge human suffering. Last night, there was a death that affects everyone in our country. And today, I'm finding it hard to dig in my pocket for change at Cub foods, or press down the brake pedal when my car approaches a stop sign. It's hard to do anything but feel loss in a private, non-conveyable sense. And anything that I've done today to try and rationalize or understand it feels wrong, including writing this column.

Going into the final stretch of the election, I was prepared for a failure of the electoral college. I was prepared for voter fraud and a race decided in the courts by illegal partisan efforts. I wasn't prepared, however, to hear that a majority of Americans would vote to re-elect George W. Bush. Because in the last few months, I'd started to believe that the fear and the lies were all laid bare, that there was absolutely no question that the president is running an illegal democracy with the intent of leveraging unilateral military force on the entire world.

A bunch of Alterman wannabes. Of course they're unprepared, because they would not ever have heard anything different in their classes, in their dorms or in their dining hall or apartment.

Of course they leave here one day, and sometimes they realize the world doesn't spin around their axis.