Seriously. This fucking night. Holy shit.

I knew tonight would be the final Jon Stewart episode of the Daily Show. I have tried to prepare myself for that, but there’s only so much you can do. Mostly, I have just been dreading it. The sort of dull, cold, helpless dread that comes from knowing something bad is coming and that you can’t do a damn thing about it.

I’ve thought of some really horrifying metaphors for that (because I cannot, for reals, help myself) but I am not going to share them because I like you people and think you should be able to sleep at night.

I know that, once I watch that last episode, I will begin grieving. Yes, grieving. We associate that word with death, but we grieve any kind of loss, whether it’s a loved one dying or the removal of someone from the place where you know them and love them and see them hundreds of times a year.

They say that grief is like losing a part of yourself, and I feel like Jon Stewart became a part of me and every other Daily Show fan. He was the magical man who could take horrible things said by horrible people for horrible reasons and turn them into laughter. That’s why the Daily Show became the most trusted news source for people with functional brains. You got the poison and the antidote in one dose. With Jon Stewart’s help, the news was far more digestible because the Daily Show filtered out the worst of it and helped you with the rest.

What I am saying is that Jon Stewart was America’s kidney.

And the things is, I know that the show will still be funny. It will have the same correspondents, the same writers, the same producers. I know that a lot of Stewart’s glow is from the light of others.

But not all of it. It’s you we love, Jon. And it’s you we’ll miss. I know that makes you uncomfortable, but it’s still true.

That’s why everyone is acting like you are dying tonight. We all know that the man we know as Jon Stewart isn’t dying.

But The Daily Show With Jon Stewart is dying, and that is going to take a long time to get over.

Honestly, I feel really bad for Trevor Noah. He’s going to experience the ultimate form of having to follow the headliner.

You know what? Let’s move on to something marginally less depressing : Canadian politics.

I learned today that the first national debate leading up to the October election here in Canuckistan. We have been ruled by the monster Stephen Harper for around eight years now, and he is someone for whom there is not enough hate in the Universe to express my degree of loathing for him. He has spent all his time as PM dismantling everything Canadians hold dear, fulfilling every twisted dream of the moral cripples who call themselves Conservatives these days, and Canadians, being the polite and reserved people that we are, have been quietly waiting for the chance to boot his ass into a decaying orbit.

Canada would be greatly improved by his assassination. Even at this late date.

However, take heart, gentle reader. His poll numbers are so low they have had to add a new sub-basement to store them. Canadians are sick and fucking tired of him. I bet you could go to a thousand Tim Hortons’ and still be unable to find anyone who will admit to having voted for him. The fix is in as far as he is concerned, a fact which I dearly hope his enormous fucking ego will hide from him until it is far, far too late.

Right now, the battle is between the Liberals, who are Canadians center-left party, and the New Democratic Party, otherwise knows as the NDP. To me, there is no fight. It is not a center-right era. Justin Trudeau (son of great PM Pierre Trudeau and leader of the Liberals) can’t hope to match NDP leader Tom Muclair’s ability to translate the people’s anger towards not just Harper but the financial establishment, the 0.1 percent, and plutocracy in general. The Liberal party is just as in bed with the corporate elite as the Conservatives. They are tainted, compromised, and just plain unacceptable to any real left-wing Canadian.

People are just plain angry, and there is no way the Let’s Be Reasonable And Talk About This party can compete.

Oh well, at least our cousins to the South are providing some light entertainment tonight with their own hilarious brand of politics. Tonight is also the night of their first Republican political debate for their election in November… of 2016!

And it will be, of course, a thigh-slapping clown car demolition derby. It will be a debate with ten, count’m, ten participants… and that leaves seven genuine presidential candidates out!

I love it already. I mean, how the hell do you have a ten person debate? No matter how rational and fair a system they have worked out, it’s already merry chaos.

And of course, they will all be gunning for the frontrunner, Donald Freaking Trump. And the thing is, they can’t get him. Not only is the man’s ego bigger than his fortune, his supporters are not listening. They, like him, don’t listen, don’t care what anyone says, and all the challenges to his character, his experience, his policies, and his qualifications won’t make the slightest bit of difference to them.

They will only make him seem more alpha as they roll off his back.

I am also hoping that they start sniping at each other. Less of a chance of that, because they do have a single enemy, so to speak, but at least some of smaller dogs on stage are going to want to take down Jeb Bush, the… secondrunner? middlerunner? The secnd guy in the polls, too.

And seeing as these people are, to a man, despicable, nothing but good can come of them doing their best to destroy one another, and, as a byproduct, the Republican brand.

Let’s just sit back, munch some popcorn, and hope for a very high casualty rate, shall we?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.