• These booths maybe account for a quarter of what you can find at Short Run. (Click to enlarge.)

Look. I'm assuming you've voted*. Unless you're out volunteering for the Democrats right now**, there's not much you can do to change the election. You can read all the articles you want, you can obsessively refresh Nate Silver's blog, but it's not helping anything. You should go out. And I know just the place you should go.

Short Run is going on right now at the Vera Project. It's a small press and zine expo, and there are a ton of things there you should see. Alice Blue have their brand-new Shotgun Wedding series of chapbooks, which focuses on local poets and short story writers. There are new books from local cartoonists David Lasky, Greg Stump, and Mark Campos. Jess Rees is selling her beautiful, 50s textbook-inspired booklets and prints. Peter Bagge is there. Jim Woodring's walking around being a Genius. There wil be music and animation and screen printing. People are handing out free zines about everything you can imagine: Comics, memoir, manifestoes about race, historical essays. There are a ton of cheap, delicious-looking baked goods. They're selling candied bacon, too.

It's just the sort of thing to make you forget about all the stuff that's out of your control at the moment: Tables full of interesting items, people who are eager to talk about art, and a bunch of booklets and prints and t-shirts that have all been lovingly crafted by hand. It's free. I'm telling you, you won't regret going.

* If you haven't voted, vote now. Don't wait until the last minute. Waiting until the last minute is dumb. Something awful might happen. Vote and mail your vote. You'll feel better, and so will I.

** If you are out volunteering for the Democrats right now, you're my hero.