"You're just kind of caught saying, 'What's next?' "

I've got a novel idea - GET A FRICKIN' LIFE!!!

"They're going to be heartbroken at not being heartbroken," said Mr. Epstein, a novelist who is chairman of the creative writing department at Boston University. "It's not just a joke. That's what's made us unique. We were the Boston Red Sox that never could win."

Okay, I've got another novel idea. How about the Red Sox totally forfeit those four games and give the championship to the St. Louis Cardinals - maybe their fans would appreciate it. No wonder a**holes like Kerry and Kennedy keep getting elected in Massachusetts.

"There's a crack in Calvinism now," Mr. Epstein said. "Now, we're going to have to find something else. Maybe Bostonians will be secretly wishing for a Kerry loss so they can wail about that."

You got it, another NOVEL idea: Hey all you Bostonians, cast all your ballots for Bush, then you "can wail about that." That'll really show 'em!

"Suddenly all things seem possible," said Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on genocide at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "For ordinary people who sort of thought, 'Maybe I'll never get that promotion,' maybe they think now anything can happen," Ms. Power said.

One word: delusional. Can these quotes be real? I mean, this woman (an expert on genocide????) actually thinks "ordinary people" will be going around thinking more highly of themselves because the Red Sox won the World Series? D-E-L-U-S-I-O-N-A-L. But wait, it gets better:

But she also recognizes that she and many others will never feel quite the same about the Red Sox and about baseball.

For example, this summer, when Ms. Power traveled to Sudan to learn about the killing in Darfur, she listened to most Red Sox games on the Major League Baseball Web site in the middle of the Sudanese night.

Can you envision this in your mind? There she is, somewhere in the middle of an ongoing genocide and she's listening to the games over the internet? What, was there a lull in the genocide?

"Maybe it will just become about a baseball rivalry instead of a humiliated city," she said. "It could make baseball less about the meaning of life and more about just baseball."

Yeah, like I suggested above, get a life.