It's been a while. Nobody reads this anyway, so who cares?! I have to tip my hat to Keith Foulke last night for that last pitch. I think this is as close as the Red Sox will get to a miracle, I'm afraid. But I will reserve a space for a little Oakland pride in that moment last night. I am rooting for the Red Sox, who besides Yanks fans wouldn't? But the Yanks just have too many weapons. I'm already mentally preparing myself to root for the Cards in the WS.

Now, on to more serious matters. Like this. Jesus, talk about pissing my pants.

Okay, seriously. I am doing some serious wood knocking at the moment, but things are looking up for Kerry, whose campaign reminds me of the Greeks and the Olympics. They waited until the last minute to get the job done, but they did a good job in the end.

Finally, since I bought Brian Wilson's "Smile" two weeks ago, there has been a song or a fragment from that record stuck in my head ever since. I wonder if the gods are trying to tell me something, that maybe I shouldn't have retired from the rock and have more important things to contribute than answering tech emails and phone calls.

God I love it when I'm right. Cheney's going to try and be grave and somber about 9/11 and try to scare everybody. I called it way back on 7/9, in a post right here.

I'm hoping Edwards has done his homework in retorts to this method of spin, and that he's not going to try and change the subject to his standard stump speech. Cheney's in a different league and all Edwards needs to do is show his command of the subject, and his personality will do the rest.

With regard to the windsurfing ad, way back in February I said that Kerry needed to watch out about his dumb photo ops. Boy, I love quoting myself when I am right.

I don't think Kerry windsurfing looks as bad as Dukakis in the tank. But he is a little fey. Remember the Philly Cheesesteak flap in the primaries? He survived that one, and still seems to be leading in PA, meaning Philly must have forgiven (because the Pennsyltucky part of PA will never consider him). And there have been attempts throughout the campaign to link other photo-ops to the dreaded tank. None have stuck yet. This new ad is the closest it's come. Careful, John, careful.

Bravo again, Michael Moore. Bush is the flip-flopper, not Kerry. Did I mention I hate George Bush? Hate him. With a passion!

I love it. Cheney says that Kerry 'dissed Allawi. All I can say it, it takes one to know one. God I hate them! I hate every last person in that administration with a vengeance.

I must put in at least one jab on our boy GWB today: It's interesting that the only retort he has about the war now is that people who are simply reporting the truth on the ground as they see it are "pessimistic." LBJ made that same mistake, namely denial. And GWB uses 9/11 whereas LBJ used "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1."

Today my wife and I have a heavy heart. Renee, our beloved cat of sixteen years, left us last night. We had to make the call and put her down. I've been fortunate enough thus far to have not experienced the sudden loss of someone I was close to in fourteen years. And that day was yesterday, fourteen years ago, same as the day Renee was put to sleep.

I first met Renee as a ten year old, when she crawled through my wife's childhood bedroom window and curled up under my arm one hot summer's night in Rochester, NY in 1998. She was born in the closet in that very same room when my wife was 13 or 14. We decided to take her out with us to California that summer of '98 and she had probably spent about half of that time since either on my chest, giving me head butts on my chin, or under my arm. On Sunday mornings it was almost like clockwork: I'd open the newspaper and here would come Renee, poking her nose right under the paper as if to say "the news of the world is not important right now. Remember me?" And that is how I feel today. The news of the world, beheadings, more dead soldiers, more lies from Bush and a refusal to accept facts by blanketly saying "they're guessing," none of that matters to me right now as much as the memory of our cat.

And I am trying to drown out the sadness of events during the past couple of days and summon my memory of head butts, purrs, good night's sleeps with Renee under my arm on one side, and my wife curled up next to me on the other. On any given night during these past few months, she would be there as I watched the Oakland A's fall, rise, and seem to fall again. I was hoping for another season of football to share with the best cat in the world by my side. But we knew this day would come eventually. Still, some may say "who cares, it's only a cat," but the hell with all of that. I am feeling what I am feeling, a huge emptiness that was not there two days ago.

To all who may be reading, please raise a glass for Renee, the best cat in the world!