That’s it. The end.

You’re not going to see another sunset later than 6 p.m. until March. In fact, this weekend, when we spiral back into the existential abyss of standard time, they’re just going to break another hour off the back end of every day like you snap off a stick of KitKat.

But unlike the sweet, chocolatey goodness of that inimitable wafery confection, the darkness into which we descend is only liable to become more bitter, for the approaching election appears to have widened the lightless chasm that divides our country.

I don’t think it’s going to get any better, regardless of the election’s outcome. Whether the House and Senate shift right or further left, there simply will not be enough movement in either direction to get anything accomplished—like the EIU student senate, which has proven itself particularly skilled at not getting its crap together to do anything.

(I mean, if you bother to run for office and get elected, shouldn’t you at least show up every now and then?)

Yep, the mantle of darkness descending on us this month is a heavy one, weighing on our shoulders. You can’t even be happy about the unseasonably warm weather, because it’s just another sign that climate change is fixin’ to turn out the lights on us a lot sooner than we had hoped 20 or 30 years ago.

Climate change. There’s another thing that’s not going to get fixed in this election cycle, or perhaps ever at this point.

People have sucked the Colorado River dry, and the Mississippi, after this summer’s drought is not looking much better (and to think, folks in Arizona want us to pipe our river water to them so they can water their desert golf courses. Well, they can go suck cacti, for all I care.)

That’s what I’ve got this week. It’s dark, and it’s only going to get darker, and nothing’s going to change after the midterm elections except a shift one way or another in the constant level of dread that gnaws at us all the time anyway.

Nevertheless, voting is like setting your clock back: It’s thankless and depressing, but you have to do it; and then it will only get darker.

So, go vote.

Then slide into Casey’s, get yourself a KitKat, and sleep until March. Maybe, by then, you’ll be able to afford enough gas to go somewhere for spring break.

Trent Jonas is an English graduate student. He can be reached at tcjonas@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.