One-Way Time Machine
I haven't been able to do much work today, to my increasing frustration. The NH primary is a plausible-enough distraction, and I started to write a post here about how Obama's similarities to Bill Clinton circa 1992 must be what's driving the former president to such nasty extremes. But the race feels over to me now--I'm fully prepared to be proven wrong after polls close tonight, but given the reported record turnout in New Hampshire it's hard to imagine the Obama train was derailed today.

No, something else is going on. And through a series of links I won't retrace here, I wound up on YouTube, looking at this.

I was 15 years old in 1988, and not even a fan of Throwing Muses yet. I got into them a year later, and while it somewhat took the form of angst-filled wishing I had a girlfriend as cool as Kristin Hersh--or any girlfriend at all, for that matter--the bleak beauty of their music just hit me like frigid air on a sore tooth. It still does.

I wouldn't go back to my teen years and I don't generally feel like I've wasted my time since then. But we're so far from those days now, and there's something very sobering in the occasional realization that, no, there's no way back. Ever.