Surveying the wreckage after the election, Mary Kay Kare writes:

[D]o not speak to me of Hope. I will have no truck with her; she is a vicious, lying bitch who exists only to betray you and break your heart. Every. Single. Time.

This, for 86 years, has been the creed of the Red Sox fan. And after a few crushing disapointments, Red Sox Nation has been ruefully wondering if a Red Sox victory would presage only some larger apocalypse.

Flip forward to today, as I'm watching the ten o'clock news on the local Fox affiliate, and even they are comparing our upcoming assault on Falluja to Vietnam.

I'd like to give the Red Sox credit for psychologically preparing the fans for this kind of news, but the fact is they didn't. You'd think Red Sox Nation would have learned to endure failure, but last year, when the manager's brain-lock cost them game seven in a playoff series against the Yankees, was as painful as anything that had gone before. And now that they've won, it's the same thing, only this time, after all the endless decades of heartache involving nothing more than grown men hitting balls with sticks, it actually matters.

Which leaves me singing along with Depeche Mode: I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humor, and when I die I expect to see him laughing...