burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

NYTimes Top Story today:

BOSTON WINS SERIES, 4-0
Red Sox Erase 86 Years of Futility in 4 Games
By TYLER KEPNER
The Red Sox, the team that perfected heartbreak, silenced the Cardinals, 3-0, in Game 4 to win their first World Series since 1918.

[...]

Boston won it in the city where Johnny Pesky held the ball in Game 7 of the 1946 World Series, the first of four Series calamities for the Red Sox.

[...]

Epstein, the general manager, grew up in Boston with the lessons of generations before him. He and his twin brother, Paul, stood together on a couch in 1986, when they were 12 years old, ready to jump for joy when the Red Sox beat the Mets.

That victory never came, and this year when the Yankees led the Red Sox in the championship series, three games to none, Epstein knew the facts. No team that had ever been in such a hole had recovered to win the series.

The Red Sox' players knew it, too, but they did not care. They have not lost since. They are the last team standing. They made history.

"They believed," Epstein said. "That's all that matters."

Dude, i got teary reading the end of that.

Trials of faith have never been foreign to the New England mind. Whether it was scratching an existence out of the granite-veined earth or the preparing for an afterlife of Calvinist severity, the joys of the moment have always been spare - and attended by no small amount of toil.

The failures of the Red Sox are a product of struggle, not concession, and to some, they are best seen as the reflection of the region's doctrinal traditions. "There's something about the Puritan legacy," says Isaac Kramnick, the vice president of undergraduate education at Cornell University and a Red Sox fan. "There's something about the inherent nature of New Englanders" that believes that bad can triumph over good.

-from the Christian Science Monitor thanks to jadelennox

In other news....

Forthcoming book argues Lincoln was gay.

"Ancient hobbit-sized human species discovered"

"Since the Redskins became the Redskins in 1933, the result of the team's final home game before the presidential election has correctly predicted the White House winner. If the Redskins win, the incumbent party wins. If they lose, the incumbent party is ousted."

"Interested in becoming president this year? If so, hope for an electoral college tie. With an unlikely, but plausible, perfect tie -- 269 electoral votes for both George W. Bush and John Kerry -- anyone meeting the Constitutional qualifications for president could end up president."

I enjoy the smith_step chalkings -- “Ballots kill cute helpless trees. Stop the violence. Don’t vote.” Much better than some of the crap the Smith Dems have put out -- “Bush is scary. Vote Kerry.” “Like books? Vote for a President who can read. Kerry 2004.”

Dear Everyone: Stop talking about anniesj!!!! Her situation is not a sign of the apocalypse. Really. I promise.

The election is in mere days and i haven’t been defriended in ages. (Though the magic of Default View of course allows people to ignore me without my knowing.) Is this an additional sign of the apocalypse?

I am so at that point of wanting Kerry to win just so i don’t have to listen to 4 more years of “Bush and his cronies are teh evol!!11” I’m not happy with either of my options for President and have once again reached the point of not caring about the results of the election.

No one made reference to Red Sox/Kerry today, which made me happy.

I was telling Emma the other day that i dislike most movies/books/TV because i dislike most people, so obviously portrayals of human behavior/interaction is less than appealing to me.

Valerie Martin spoke to my UMass class today. Talking about why she set her dystopia in the past, she said that to say that we have a long way to go until we hit dystopia is a kind of optimism. She also said, “It’s bad now, but it’s been worse, and it’s gonna get worse,” that that’s why writers keep writing dystopian novels. Though i don’t have Emma’s aversion to books with sad endings, books that are thoroughly depressing (like, oh, 1984) are not really my thing. I would much rather read/write stories about people struggling, and triumphing -- even if it’s only in small ways.

Moving on to fannish stuff (that isn’t baseball)...

vid of the S/X outtake kiss from “Normal Again” is circulating. (see mpoetess and others)

Talking about Edmund (King Lear) in Shakespeare class i totally thought of the First Evil’s speech at the end of “Lessons” (BtVS 7.01) -- “It’s not about right, not about wrong; it’s about power.”

Oh, and the official release date for the S7 DVD is November 16. Angel S5 isn’t out yet, but given that its release schedule has been Feb/Sept i’m guessing it’ll come out this February.

Release of the Wonderfalls DVD (13 episodes) got officially reported. Release date is February 1.