A HOUSE NEAR THE ZOO. Being a positive sort, I can come up with all sorts of silver linings:

• Inevitable "Who needs stem cells anyway?" article by Perfesser Reynolds.
• Fewer young men competing for jobs and women, thanks to Iran War and related draft.
• Economic collapse finally brings Manhattan rents down to affordable levels.
• Wider Second-Amendement franchise finally allows me the arsenal I need to take a few of the bastards with me during my final rampage.

And so on. While I can't say I'm happy with the results of the election, I'm not shattered. Hope springs eternal, but once you pass a certain emotional age, you learn not to lean on it too hard.

That Rove would roust enough rednecks out of the woods to put Bush over and establish several fag-free zones across the country was always a strong possibility, and when it came to pass it came not as a shock but as an unpleasant reminder that somewhere West of the Hudson there is a large land mass populated mainly by Jesus freaks and neo-Rotarians who are, by some ancient political accident, our fellow-countrymen. We have managed to insulate ourselves from most of their depradations pretty well; though we do have to send them far larger tax revenues than we ever get back, it is all in all a pretty good deal.

Of course, we may have to throw up a few more sandbags twixt them and us when Fred Phelps ascends to the Supreme Court or the Anti-Witchcraft Amendment sails through the new Congress, but let's worry about that later. For now we'll just return to our vantage point and continue taking notes for our natural history of Boobus Americanus. Our predecessor at that task, Mencken, when asked why he remained in a country whose citizens he considered imbeciles, replied, "Why do men go to zoos?" For those of us with functioning frontal lobes, there is always some amusement to be gleaned from even the most desperate of situations, so long as the wild animals are kept in their cages and the home to which we return after a day's entertainment is sufficiently far upwind of the smell.