A few things, mostly unrelated. The Cleveland Indians walloped the stuffing out of the New York Yankees, 22 - 0, in Yankee Stadium the other night. It was the most lopsided shut-out home defeat in baseball history, if I am not mistaken. It was great. That being said, the Yankees aren't "over", and it still only counts as one loss. They are still a fearsome ballclub and the Red Sox are still behind them in the standings. But the good guys are closing in. Sweet. Yesterday as I was walking to the subway from work I saw a pick-up truck stopped at the light, covered with pictures of the World Trade Center burning, with biblical quotations and slogans painted joyfully here and there about how marriage is between a man and a woman, for the bible told him so, and how America (or at least New York) brought 9-11 on itself as some sort of holy wrath of God. I passed in front of the truck as I crossed the street and gave the guy the finger. The guy, a slight grey bearded man with glasses caught my eyes for a second, expressionless, and looked slightly away. I don't know why I did it (well, I know WHY, but I didn't exactly MEAN to do it; it just happened. I am not really, normally, a 'flip off strangers' sort of guy, but there it was.) and I felt awful about it. I still do. Weird. My friend Jake once said, and I paraphrase, that non-believers are getting overcharged for their lunch. Maybe I was just telling the guy that I didn't appreciate the extra charges he was putting on my tab. Obviously, not all 'believers' are charging me extra, so to speak. There are plenty of people I know and love (and plenty I don't know) who live sane lives in accordance with some set of religious beliefs. Great. No problem. Plus, I am not exactly a non-believer but my beliefs surely don't involve telling other people how to live their lives, until THEIR beliefs start telling OTHER other people, and me, how to live ours. Speaking of believers, you keep hearing this thing about how the terrorists "hate us because we are free" or they "hate our freedom". Criminy. I love how it is seems to be the same people who go out of their way to RESCIND our freedoms (Patriot Act, Choice, 'defense of marriage', etc, etc, etc.) at every turn who talk about how the terrorists hate our freedom. Which 'Freedom', exactly, are they talking about? The Freedom to form faceless and conscienceless multi-national corporations and then ensure, legislatively, that they will be unencumbered from razing a path of destruction through the world, culturally and ecologically? Or, perhaps they mean the Freedom to invade a country under intentionally false pretenses, killing approximately 13,000 of 'them' and 1,100 of 'us' (so far!) and go on to say that it doesn't matter if the original reasons were full-on actual lies, the world is still better off. I am not crazy about those particular 'freedoms' either. I've been watching as much of the RNC as I can handle (which is, admittedly, not much) but I saw something the other night that I found interesting. Arnold Schwarzenegger said "If you believe that this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you’re a Republican." In my opinion, if you believe that a single bully, not a group consensus, is the best hope for Democracy than you need a fucking dictionary. In totally unrelated news Erin and I are the happy owners of a used cat. The folks Erin worked for had three cats and two small children. One of the cats, Bean, was getting sort of overwhelmed and neglected, so we took her in. She is a sweetie, and it's awfully nice to have a little black shadow creeping around the apartment (I am not quite as crazy about the box of poop and the hair, but that's cats). I am sure the entire focus of dirtdirt.com will be cat pictures from here on in. You've been warned.