Every Tuesday in In Case You Missed It, Mike Haverty brings you a closer look at news you may have glossed over or missed altogether.

The big day. There were several big days leading up to this day, but this day is the biggest. Weeks and weeks screamed right by our ears, the day’s Doppler dose of interviews, op-eds, endorsements, attacks, malarkey, bullshit, binders, bayonets, percents, PACs super and otherwise and straight-up lies, all culminating by tomorrow night when your smug coworker’s bumper sticker swag will either continue a proud residence on the BMW bumper or be scratched off with the WD-40 of defeat.

Don’t think about it. You’ve already been thinking about it too much. Our news cycle has made the worst of it. Any story you hear now isn’t going to change your mind. Just tune out. The last three weeks (the entire time I hadn’t written an article, for those paying attention), I’ve had trouble with the sudden inundation of horrible, stupid, sad, amazing stories coming in.

Of course I send out prayers to Sandy, but I’m a landlocked writer with nothing to offer, save for long sentences with too many commas. Of course Donald Trump is a gold-haired douche-imp harbinger of everything inconsequentially shitty, but how did I get revved up enough to allow the GDIHEIS to bother me?  Of course I want to talk about Tila Tequila’s new life rebelling against the Illuminati, but how does one cheer on the fruits of suicidal-drug-binge-induced brain damage, even if she’s a MySpace celebrity?  Cautiously? Academically? Quietly and to no one?

One of Octomom’s kids saw her sex tape. And all of Hulk Hogan’s won’t be released. Two sex tape bombshells during the election season. Somewhere, an analyst will use these news stories to better tune his election prediction. Taking the amount of new sex tape news, multiplying that with fake Sandy pictures, divided by climate change deniers to the power of Star Wars outrage minus every word Brownie has said in his entire life, the future president is… dead Nyan cat?

Wait, no, NOT NYAN CAT!

You know what I’m doing today? I’m eating a bag of fun-sized Twix and listening to songs with saxophones. You know why? First, today is National Saxophone Day. Nothing matters on National Saxophone Day except saxophones. Second, it’s still about a week since Halloween, and eating a bag of candy feels right. The excess of coverage, change and tragedy has to be drowned out with other forms of absolute excess or absolute zen or just Absolut. Television fails its regular placating. Political ads are an awfulness irredeemable by even the mightiest, burliest TV mustache, a game played with Scotch tape, a Sharpie and a television screen. I’m going to be covered in spent chocolate as I listen to blues and ska all day. I will listen to “Danger! High Voltage” and airsax the solo, and then airsax it again and again until my body can sax no more. I’ll probably even vote!

However you choose to spend this day, be guided by your smarts. Red, blue, independent, Kodos, saxophones. You made it to election day. You earned whatever these last three weeks have put you through. Not that we’re free from that awful necessity of new information, or from the wreckage that lays around us. The winner at the end of the night will not change no matter how much you worry. Rise above it, even for a couple of minutes, at least for a saxophone solo.