It’s been a couple days now, and it keeps happening — and at the oddest times, too. Sometimes I can control it and sometimes I just let it happen, let the people on the subway stare. My breath hitches kinda funny, hiccups, and my throat and voicebox shake like a bus on a bumpy road. My eyes tear up every time and I’ve just sort of stopped wiping it away.

I can’t tell if I’m happy or sad when it happens, mostly I’m just swallowed up by the enormity of the feeling. It’s like being a particle of plankton and getting swallowed up by a gigantic, benevolent whale.

America elected Barack Obama to be the President of the United States on Tuesday night, and the emotional aftershocks just keep coming.

So along with the spontaneous, random sobs of joy and relief, I’m having this recurring hallucination. Or maybe it’s a daydream. But whatever.

Every time I see, hear, or imagine somebody doing something incredibly well, that person has Barack Obama’s head.

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A disgruntled Vietnam Vet with a foul mouth and a serious anger management problem is not the kind of guy I’d like to have running the country. Hell, I wouldn’t even want him on my bowling team.

John McCain and Walter Sobchak — John Goodman’s character in ‘The Big Lebowski’ — seem like they have a lot in common, once you think about it. David pointed this out to me the other day, and we got pretty obsessed. So we partnered up with Chad Williams of PBC Productions to mash together one of John Goodman’s titanic tantrums in “The Big Lebowski” with some images of John McCain’s face … hope it’s as fun for you as it is for us.

You can see a hi-res version here, or just check it out on Youtube below:

I am writing to you from a command position approximately 1 mile above the Manhattan skyline. I am hovering upside down in the cool open sky, wearing only a tremendous pair of headphones pumping Rare Earth’s “I just Want to Celebrate” at a volume that will not only crack hardened Al-Qaeda operatives but convince them to climb aboard the P-Funk Mothership.

Occasionally, featherlike wisps of cloud will slip over me, caressing my body like cold, wet ferrets. When this happens, a perfectly tailored white linen suit with waterproof properties magically appears on me, protecting me from any dampness or discomfort.

This is what it’s like to have a minor manic episode — hovering high and naked and feeling music down to the DNA. Sort of. Music is mission critical to a proper manic mood. It’s got to be loud as it can get, preferably with a solid, somewhat corny groove. Lately I’ve been rocking the aforementioned Rare Earth song, but Lee Michaels’ “Do You Know What I Mean,” Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz,” or any number of other cracker-funk jams will do. Soulwax’s entire “Nite Versions” album is choice mania music.

Imagine being a floppy hand puppet left in the corner of an abandoned office and feeling Rare Earth enter your body like a hand in a surgical glove, invisibly lifting you into the sky — then realizing that the guys in Rare Earth are the six-fingered hand of God who’s letting you dangle upside down in space and cruising you around the skyline for a while. The view is spectacular and the soul is invincible … temporarily.

Then comes the crash. I’m working on that part. I’ve enlisted a trained professional to teach some dismount techniques, and for right now, she’s doing a bang-up job. She seems to think that the high highs aren’t healthy either, but how can anything that feels that good be all bad?

Coming off the hand of God today wasn’t quite the triple-axel, point-and-stick landing I’d hoped for, but I’m back down to normal and I don’t feel like a dusty puppet in the corner again.

It’s all about the little victories, people.