You really need to win the first game of a playoff series, especially at home.  So, it is an excellent start.

Speaking of fine beginnings, words fail me insofar as the Other Delightful New England Team is concerned.  The first four games of the season have been simply awesome.

I have been very tired lately–strangely enough, it is not as easy to work all night, and function normally the next day as it once was–and I am ashamed to admit that I have been reading what I think of as “Testosterone Thrillers.”  There are several requirements for this kind of book.  For one thing, there are lots of weapons, endlessly and lovingly detailed to the degree that even Freud would be very, very frightened.  I do not care for violence in any way, shape, or form–but, if this is so, why do I love Hawk?  (Actually, even when he is going through the motions, I think Robert Parker is much too fine a writer to be sledge-hammered into the testosterone thriller category–and I may devote an entire post to him someday soon.)

Anyway, I am pretty sure that authors of testosterone thrillers do all of their research on sites like this.  Their main characters invariably–and hilariously–almost always work for multiple secret government agencies, and are invulnerable in the extreme.  When they get shot, for example, which happens on a regular basis, they find it–a trifle annoying.  The authors’ notes are full of thank yous to people who really ought to be a little more circumspect about how much sensitive information they reveal to writers who are going to go off and publish all of it.  If any of the characters in the books dare to express reservations about, say, the efficacy–and morality–of torture, they are immediately dismissed as unpatriotic weenies, who should possibly be jailed forever, if not killed outright.  (with a cool weapon!)  The heroes of the books know better, and absolutely hate concepts like habeas corpus.  They approve of things like this, and they fail to see the irony of this.  (Oh, John, when–and why–did you become such a lapdog?)  If they saw this or this, they would be outraged, and shout that it was a complete lie–and accuse anyone who suggested otherwise of treason.  They adore the unfettered use of signing statements.  The notion of Congressional oversight makes them sick.  They would censor this.  They have no idea why this photo is scary, but also really funny.

This upsets them horribly, because they think Jack Bauer is sometimes too sensitive.  (Bill, what the hell were you thinking?  And Rudy, what were you thinking?)

A Salon author, Mark Follman, wrote a great piece about the current Administration’s unfailing reliance upon fear.   Personally, I’d rather have our country’s leaders react more like this.

So, what books am I talking about?  Oh, Brad Thor.  Vince Flynn.  W.E.B. Griffin.

And, despite being somewhat ashamed of myself for doing so, why do I read them? 

Because life is short, and they make me giggle.