I’m approaching the third week of a constant headache, which began when I had a bad cold for a few days, and which has not relented though the cold is long gone. It’s not the worst headache I’ve ever had. It just hasn’t gone away in three weeks. It does not respond to any medicine. It waxes and wanes, a little, but is always present. I’ve had blood drawn and all the tests. All perfect.

Twenty-two years ago, when my wife and I were first dating, we attended an afternoon game in Oakland between the Athletics and the Chicago White Sox. We arrived a little late, found our seats. I stood up to get us a couple of beers, stepped into the aisle, and was hit in the temple by a foul ball coming hard and straight off the bat.

I was knocked out for a couple seconds. When I came to, I was lying on the stairs. A stadium worker hustled me up to the mezzanine and into a small supply room. He detained me there until I signed some papers. I remember feeling confused and, because I was on my way to get beer, did not wish to be detained any further, so I signed whatever it was, and received no copy. I am pretty sure all of this actually happened.

I bought beers, returned to my seat, where my new girlfriend, now wife, was in a panic. But I felt fine, if a little dazed. A stranger in a nearby seat congratulated me on my hard head and told me it was unfair—I should have at least received the errant ball for my trouble. No idea where that went. I said, in my opinion, I should not have had to pay for the beers.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking about this incident, my headache reappearing immediately, in the way that I always have: that this long ago minor injury, which had the potential to have killed me on the spot, but had instead done nothing at all, would eventually cause my death in some long-delayed way. And that, maybe, this mysterious headache was the first sign of my last days.

I have a brain MRI scheduled for next week. But when I spoke to my doctor I joked that the headache might simply be a symptom of my Trump Derangement Syndrome. She said she was suffering from this ailment, as well, losing sleep and sanity as a provider who delivers gender-affirming care to minors, and was now swamped with new patients, after multiple area hospitals had begun denying such treatments. President Shithead hates transgender people, you see, especially teenagers, and has been using his Sharpie to abolish them in a series of malevolent Executive Orders.

But, of course, that is somehow the least of it. In the weeks since the inauguration, President Shithead has caused one of the worst constitutional crises in our history. The major news outlets have exhausted all available synonyms and are beginning to call his actions what they literally are: illegal. His corruption, cruelty, arrogance and stupidity make a stereotypical schoolyard bully look like Snuggle, the fabric softener teddy bear; and his lies would make a veteran cartel assassin blush.

His French bulldog, Elon Musk, meanwhile, has been applying his fellow definitely-normal-human tech bro, Mark Zuckerberg’s famous toddler-friendly corporate dictate, Move Fast and Break Things, to the “maximally transparent,” completely secretive work of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” where the “things” being broken are the operations of the executive branch agencies, the rule of law, and our constitutional checks and balances, and where “move fast” means “do it quickly enough so that by the time the courts intervene it’s far too late.” The “department” is actually not a real department or agency, nor does any of it have to do with efficiency, nor is Musk, according to the White House, actually working for it at all, let alone leading it.

But each day “DOGE” releases tweets, on Musk’s personal social media site, X, lying about the “waste, fraud and abuse” they claim to have found. All of it lacks context and detail, and all of it reveals they simply don’t understand anything about what they’re doing, what the agencies do, where the actual waste and inefficiencies are, and don’t give a shit. MAGA fucking loves it, though, eating it up like a dog discovering a new kind of delicious feces.

The Congressional Republicans are prostrate before their Supreme Leader, their slacks and undies bunched around their ankles, and the Democrats are tweeting furiously, and fundraising righteously. Meanwhile, federal judges are left to explain science, the Constitution, history, and democratic principles to Trump’s lawyers; as thousands and thousands of federal workers are being fired and sensitive agency data, including Americans’ personal records, are being hoovered up into Elon’s teenage lackey’s laptops.

The legitimate news outlets—you know, the “mainstream media” that everyone categorically despises—are absolutely overwhelmed by the firehose of malfeasance and chicanery, and are nonetheless doing yeoman’s work reporting on as much as they possibly can, in increasingly incredulous tones. At the same time, the blogosphere of stacks and blueskies and Xs and “independent journalism” is complaining bitterly about the total lack of news coverage of, for example, the thousands of Americans protesting in the streets on a now-weekly basis. Admittedly, these events have only been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, ABC, NBC, CNN and CBS, Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, nearly all local outlets, and even Fox News. But, you know, the MSM, man—just a bunch of shills.

It’s all absolutely exhausting, although my wife and older son and I have now attended two big protests at our nearby state capitol, which have at least been entertaining and cathartic. In spite of my vague nausea. And my persistent headache.