You haven’t experienced New York until you’ve explained it to an eight year-old. For the first time in my life, I feel like I possess wisdom. Granted, it’s “numbered streets run East-West”- and “East and West are two cardinal directions”-level wisdom, but still. I’m imparting it. What I am not doing is writing blog posts, because we’ve got a dense itinerary of sights to see. There is no Combat! blog today, and I am exhausted. While I work the airplane out of my neck, how about you tweet “fuck me daddy” at the Pope? That’s what teenagers do, apparently. Just look at this beautiful series of sentences from Vice’s Broadly:

“I do it mainly because it’s funny but also as like a social commentary?” said Will, a self-identified “teen who tweets ‘fuck me daddy’ @ the pope.” Lindsay, a 17 year-old who has a separate Twitter for “political commentary” in addition to her personal account, said she responds to the Pope with a request to be fucked “every time” he tweets.

Always put a question mark after the phrase “social commentary.” The internet is an unprecedented tool that reflects centuries of advancement in science and engineering. Teens use it to harass the pope, and I use it to make excuses. We’ll be back tomorrow, probably with something very much like this.

Did you know that in addition to being a suspiciously handsome writer, I am also the world’s greatest boyfriend? In the last 24 hours, I installed a washer/dryer in my girlfriend’s home and replaced the knob and deadbolt assembly on her front door. Oh yeah—I’m also taking her and her eight year-old son to New York City tomorrow. So I’m kind of busy today. I’ve got to do laundry and my taxes before I go, plus pack, plus acquire a long-term fish feeder, and…you know, it’s better if I don’t think about it. While I run around like the proverbial chicken who’s taking a child to New York, how about you read this funny feature Sarah Aswell wrote for McSweeney’s? Our whole writers’ group rules—rules at writing, at least. Our personal lives are all in disarray. Really just mine, I guess. I gotta go.

 

Don’t worry: after he was denied the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, Pigasus went on to a successful career in investment banking. Today he is a bundler for Hillary Clinton. After yesterday’s primaries, Pigasus and I will probably be voting for the same candidate come November, since our other option is Donald Trump. The billionaire and decreasingly funny running joke didn’t quite seize the nomination last night, but he took all in winner-take-all Florida and knocked Maro Rubio out of the race.  Now it’s just him and Ted Cruz, unless John Kasich wins 94% of delegates between now and July.

So why is Kasich staying in? He expects a brokered convention, and he’s not wrong to think that many Republicans—especially the ones who run the party—would rather send him to the generals than either of his opponents. It’s still entirely possible Trump will hit July with a simple majority of delegates, and that will be that. But it’s equally plausible he won’t, especially since former Rubio supporters would seem more likely to shift their loyalty to the other hyper-conservative anglicized Latino senator than to the egomaniac threatening riots.

In an interview with CNN about the possibility of a brokered convention, Trump said, “I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically. I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing many, many millions of people.” Note that he’s not calling for riots himself. He’s just saying, twice, that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination, that’s probably what will happen. Trump doesn’t like these riots among millions of people who demand he become president any more than you do.

All of this news is a mere curiosity to me, since I will be dead by then. I know I’ve been sicker than this before, because I had walking pneumonia in college. But this thing has really put the zap on me, and the road to recovery is long, viscous, and green with streaks of blood. I’d like to take a moment to thank the inventor of antibiotics, Ted Antibiot, because if this happened to me in 1816 I would be dead. On the other hand, I could write about the evident disintegration of the Federalist Party, so maybe it wouldn’t be so different after all.

Although my confidence in the medical profession remains at a low ebb after last year’s vertigo debacle, I went to the doctor yesterday. I’m glad I did. I’ll spare you the greenish-yellow details, but I have a variety of exciting infections in pretty much all the orifices of my head, and now I am on antibiotics. They are definitely making me better, particularly in the category of sore throat and ears, but they are also wiping me out. I assume my body is mostly bacteria, and this course of treatment will cure me by majority killing me. In this way I resemble the body politic: disgusting, injurious to public health, and likely to get worse before it gets better.

Today is a big day for presidential primaries: Ohio, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Illinois all go to the polls. If John Kasich and Marco Rubio don’t beat Donald Trump in their home states tonight, their campaigns are functionally over. That would leave Republicans to choose between Trump and Ted Cruz, not just in the primaries that follow but at the convention in July. Ohio and Florida are winner-take-all states, and if Trump wins both he could reach the convention with a simple majority of delegates. More likely, though, he’ll roll in with a plurality, leaving the party establishment to broker a compromise between two candidates it hates, or risk alienating its voters with a third candidate who didn’t run in any primaries at all.

It’s an exciting day for Republican politics, is what I’m saying here. We may be watching the first stages of a split in the GOP. Either that or we’re watching the second stage of a nationalist strongman’s ascent to power, but I don’t think so. This is a friendly reminder that polls have Trump getting smashed by Clinton in a general election, and Sanders does even better. It’s going to be okay. I mean, it’s clearly not: one of our two major parties is on the verge of nominating an incoherent and racist reality television celebrity. But it’s going to be not-okay with a president other than Donald Trump. And I’m going to live, dammit.