You have no idea. This picture will be a shock to my wife too. You have no idea. Cassie spent an hour UPSTAIRS with me yesternight.

All right. Backing up. Fourteen years ago, my beautiful wife agreed to foster the three surviving kittens of a feral litter. Turned out to be what in rescue parlance is called a dump and run. She became their mother, for better or worse.

Three of them. There was Penny, the most beautiful of the lot. We lost her after a tragic accident of outsideness. Feral doesn’t mean ‘Great Hunter.’ It means, in cat context, motherless child. You can read dates. Don’t need to tell you when we lost her.

There was Mickey, who had a marked aversion to human contact. Me, being my not so smart self, set about making friends with him ten years ago. (Can it really be that long ago? Time flies when you’re all getting old.) I would suddenly pick him up, hold him for a few seconds, and let him go. The day came when he leaped, unasked, into my lap. Los Ojos. The most beautiful eyes. Lost him a while ago.

You have no idea. Sorry. Repeating myself. Where were we? The gorgeous one, Penny, who died after a trick life played on a feral. The strong one, who became, well, Captain America without the magical shield. Brave, loyal, faithful, friend. Broke my heart to see him die. Killed me to watch Mickey die.

And Cassie in the garage. The runt, the scared one, the cat most likely to die in the rafters and require an exterminator when her body has to be pried out of the rafters.

And then, after the deaths of Mickey and Izzie (our tiny Bengal), Cassie finally moved from the garage to the house. Under couches is a pretty good strategy for an Izzie-sized cat when there’s no more Izzie on the scene.

I thought, “Good!” She’ll reconnect with her mom. Didn’t give much thought to the cat who’d been without for like ALL of her life.

Now, it almost feels like an affair. I can feel my wife’s resentment. After a decade in the rafters, the only human person Cassie wants to talk to is ME.

It’s idiotic. Imbecilic. Moronic. My mother used to refer to a phenomenon called “going round Robin Hood’s barn” to explain away what should be obvious. She was from Ohio, though, so we know how dumb Dana Millbank and Jonathon Chait would have found her.

The awful, awfully ironic truth. Cassie moved in and fixated on me. The guy who, honestly, thought she was gonna die in the rafters and make a stink while I grieved for Mickey and Penny.

Is there a God? You tell me. I have travelled a long road. My dad used to boast of running cats off the road if not killing them with his car. I was mean, very, to a cat in Ithaca, New York. Then there was Webster. Who saved my life while scarring my fingers forever. (Incidentally, probably saved my dad’s soul too. Go figure.) And then a long long string of cats I have loved with all my selfish heart.

Culminating in Cassie. She loves me. She waits for me. You have no idea. She lives under couches and only comes out when I’m there.

Sorry. You have no idea. Ten years plus of cats I courted and won a single bout out of five or six. Then, in the eleventh hour, comes Cassie, who has decided to love me and me alone.

What is God trying to tell me? I’m thinking, “Quit trying to be so smart and learn something about Grace.” I’m sure the atheists have a much better answer… Good night, Gracie.

I know a lot of you have five year olds. Most of you don’t have five year olds who weigh 110 pounds.

The evil Raebert doesn’t evince itself all the time. In fact, it’s usually at bedtime. Sound familiar? He’s tired but doesn’t want to go to bed. So he carps, and lingers, and fusses, and gets up and down from the couch for no discernible reason. He’s a pest and a grumpy one at that. When he goes into the bedroom he makes unearthly noises, as if he were tossing my wife’s shoes around.

He’s in there now. Because I yelled right in the face you see above you. You think that’s easy? Every once in a while that lovely lip curls and you get to see the most massive set of blindingly white teeth that can be seen outside of the big cat universe. All you have to do is tap him on the nose and he goes aw shucks on you and licks whatever your most recent wound is. But there’s that moment when you realize what our primordial forebears faced in the direwolf, a species documented in the fossil record.

One instant that makes you realize how privileged you are to have this kind of companion in life.

A bad day would be different. Especially at bedtime.

Yeah. I’ve seen that face. Only for nanoseconds. Which should be enough for anyone. But bedtime is bedtime. Even if your name is Raebert. After all, he’s the youngest of three Scots in the house. He’s five. Just five.

Still watching CPAC. (The wife factor, mentioned before.) Now we have a panel discussion. Those are some high boots. And some scraggly skaggy hair. Another mountain to climb for Ted Gibson. But worst of all, two suits of utter nonentity, both smart and well studied in educational issues, who have shaved their heads to disguise male pattern baldness and make me reminisce, perhaps for the first time, about the David Susskind Show on PBS a half century ago. The dark Susskind set would have made them look merely bald. The CPAC telecast makes them look like aliens with glowing heads.

Why are conservatives always and perpetually so rotten at everything connected to media? Can’t find hairdressers, wardrobe consultants, cameramen, lighting experts, and speech coaches who can translate everyday human beings into everyday human beings? Really?

She’s eloquent and someday I could vote for her for president.

But. She needs Ted Gibson from What Not to Wear to redo her hair. The most important step the conservative movement can undertake right now.

He turned five yesterday. We got McDonalds burger for everybody and we sang to Raebert. But I should have said something here.

My bad.

It was always my thing to stretch. I stretched my English major into a History major. In business school, I stretched my accounting major into a judgment on life itself, debits and credits for everybody.

I have tried to know too many things. I know more about most things than most people do, but it’s not enough. Particularly now, I am at a loss. Spent my life writing but there’s no happy result in the offing. On every front, right as I was, I lose.

All I can say is that I’m still here. Have to remember that, as ignorant as I am, I still know more than most. More than the alphabet networks, TV pundits, and entertainment loudmouths combined. Quietly. Quietly. I’m actually smart. With a quarter century track record to prove it.

If only holes didn’t open up when I’m trying to close the deal…

So tonight we were casting around for something to watch — after a week of no water, water, no water again, electrical problems, and the death of our big old non-HD TV — meaning we were in a crappy mood and looking for something, anything, diverting.

Which is when Dredd turned up on a back channel. Wrote about it on an old site. All our commenters agreed with my four star review of Dredd. That’s the backstory of the post.

This time it was listed with one star. ONE STAR.

Which tends to me make me think of the Motion Picture Arts Academy’s treatment of American Sniper.

Somebody who confronts evil and kills it is worth only one star. No Oscar. No respect. No honor.

I get it. To hell with everyone who thinks that way.

Yup. Our hero came through for us. We are happy.

Kind of a dual post. There was the Esquire Magazine of my youth, which featured incisive writing by truly talented writers and pneumatic girls aplenty.

Another point. My mother’s father, my grandpa, was a gifted cabinetmaker. I spent countless hours in his basement workshop. He was in his seventies then. And the walls of the workshop were papered with Esquire girls. Like these ones.

My mother knew and she just laughed. How I found out that women had breasts and other things. Me and Grandpa never talked about it. Think he just knew that I would get it somehow.

I learned a lot about writing from Esquire. They were there before there was Playboy. You really did read Esquire for the writing first, the girls second.

But now there’s Esquire TV. Which is politically correct, stupid, and only semi-literate. Today, though, they’re doing a Parks and Recreation marathon, which progressives claim to love. Funny thing. Parks and Recreation has a lefty cast, progressive values, and yet the show is deeply conservative. It’s the progressives, led by the comedic genius of Amy Poehler, who come off looking like total morons.

Guessing the Esquire editors don’t even know what they have wrought.

Idiots rarely do.

So I just got off the phone with my plumber because the zero degrees nuked our pump, and by “my” I don’t mean I own him or command him in any way; I inherited him from my long dead dad and he is a man I honor and respect.

Get this. He actually expressed sympathy about the fact that our pump blew up when the space heaters thawed it. Water all over the garage floor. How many times over the years has he heard this story? When he answered the phone I suggested he might be busy and he said, “Just a little.”

But he sailed right into the problem. “I’ll be out there this afternoon.” He also didn’t cushion the blow. “It could be Tuesday before a replacement pump is available.” Did I forget to tell you, he told me immediately the pump we have probably could not be saved?

I love this guy. He always comes sooner than he promises. He starts work whether you’re there or not. We once pulled back a cover from some plumbing fixture to find a snake wrapped around it and looked at one another. He said, “It’s the kind of place snakes like.” Then we finished uncovering the fixture. The snake discreetly departed the scene.

Part of me says he’s too old for what he’s doing. Another part of me says, please, please, don’t ever stop.

You think plumbers aren’t heroes? You probably think Bonnie Tyler is from West Virginia. Guess what. She’s Welsh. From WALES.

My plumber is from heaven.

UPDATE. He came early, of course, and we just now shooed him back to his wife. He’s not sure if the pump is dead. Trying to find a bad wire. Trying too long. It’s snowing like crazy and we’d rather have him in future than water today. How things are in our neck of the woods. He met Raebert. And the Scotty. They all nodded at one another. Hopefully he’s home by now. He’ll be back first thing tomorrow, you can be sure. Life as we used to live it. The grace of confidence among men.

Like you, I thought most of the grand conspiracy theories were silly: the New World Order, the Illuminati, the Bilderberger Group, the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, etc. but I finally realized there’s a Harvard house I’ve never met anybody from, and I’ve known a lot of Harvard people.

Dunster House. One of the most beautiful of all Harvard houses. But who they are, what they do, where they come from and what they’re really secretly up to, unknown.

Keep your eyes open. And your ears. If they’re from Dunster, you can be sure they’re in on it. Meaning, shhhh, The Conspiracy. Whatever it is.

Why Obama won’t win in the end. America has conquered the whole civilized world. Meaning the non-Muslim parts, or about 80 percent, which is the Pareto Principle at work.

Conquered? Yes. Not by force of arms. But by osmosis, otherwise known as technological/cultural creep.

Watch this movie, set in India. It doesn’t matter if it’s true to life or not. What matters is that it’s an example of the spread of Americanization as a recognized state of being. A woman in charge, cell phones everywhere, children as spoiled and entitled pains in the ass, sybaritic parasites aplenty, and a dutiful handful who do what needs must be done. When all is said and done, it’s not about Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc. It’s about human beings, some percentage of which do bad things all the time and have to be stopped by the good guys. Why we always need heroes.

In shorter terms, this is a Steven Seagal movie, starring a beautiful Indian woman who absolutely kicks ass, in a tradition as old as John Wayne. WITH rap, Rolls Royces, swimming pools, drug stuff, mobsters and monsters, sexual vice and abuse, and kids who watch too much TV.

All their kids are our kids. Bad. And all their heroes are our heroes. Good.

Can heroes turn kids to the good side? Yes. ‘Twas ever so.

The near and far east aren’t that far away from us. They listen to our music, use our slang, order Chinese food in cartons, use salty language in mixed company, and know what guns are for in the hands of good guys.

Isn’t that a functional definition of what we used to know as liberty?

America might be reduced, shriveled as a world power, seemingly humiliated and shoved aside. But we were never Romans like the Brits. We have been, unlike them, the Greeks, the avatars of a way of thought and life that can’t be undone by edict or even slavery. America can’t be repealed. We have conquered the world.

All that remains is for us to remember who we are and turn up the volume.

Supposed to be buried in snow tonight. Not us, though. You figure it out. The blank spot in the storm right now is us.

For reference, check this.

No college or university has been depicted in the movies as much as Harvard. Here’s a staggering link. I was just looking to see how many more actors came from Harvard than Oxford. Lots more. Harvard is a 747 with Oxford and Cambridge under its wings like two antique Lockheed tri-stars. Yale is a sorry also-ran. Princeton is just a postcard. The reality of it all.

Most of the movie depictions make it seem like Harvard is fun, or romantic, gorgeously gorgeous, or anything but the reality. It is fun, and romantic, and amazingly other, but it’s also a very very dangerous place. It can make you and it can break you. You don’t win unless you let it do both.

For people who’ve been raised with a belief in accomplishment, it’s a brush with heaven. The first place you’ve ever been where everybody automatically belongs. Everybody gets the benefit of the doubt. They’re all at Harvard. Not everybody is brilliant. Forget that. Some are there because their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers were. But they have their own magisterial authority. Others are there because whatever you believe, they can assail it, puncture it, twist it, pervert it. If you let them. Are you as smart as you think you are? Or are you one more of innumerable fakes, of which Harvard is also full.

People’s appraisal of you is not linked to grades. That’s the democratic side of the place. On the other hand, you’re supposed to be not ordinary. Which is hard to do in a place with so many who excel and whose sons and daughters proclaim ambitions they actually achieve. You’re continually breathless. It’s a motor started in your head and gut that never goes out.

It can kill you. There are suicides nobody wants to count. There are also stories of persistence.

Kind of like life, ultimately distilled, when you think about it.

Why did I write about it today? A movie called Prozac Nation. Nobody writes about the darkness. It’s not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s a crucible. You survive or you die.

Harvard is full of dangerous people. I am one of them. Go Crimson.

As you may have noticed, I have not weighed in to handicap the purported candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

I have two reasons for that. First, I’ve been too busy. Owning a deerhound and a Scotty at the same time is way above your pay grade, whoever you are. Second, who exactly is it who isn’t running for the Republican nomination?

The good news. I am NOT running for president. Even though I’m smarter than most of them and have better ideas about how to fix what’s wrong. A man’s got to know his limitations. I know mine. How come all these guys don’t?

Ben Carson. Love him to death. But he’s another Obama waiting to happen. Smartest guy in the room, inexperienced, convinced of his own superiority, destined for isolation and official paralysis. I agree with him on practically everything, but he would be a disaster.

Jeb Bush. An oxymoron. With the emphasis on moron. A complete dysfunctional nut who looks like the safest man in the room. He’s actually a white Obama; he doesn’t like Americans. What Yale can do to a man.

Marco Rubio. A pretty boy who can make moving speeches and has no experience. What’s wrong with this picture?

Chris Christie. If you want to elect an oaf for president, he has to be a charming, plausible oaf. Like Clinton. There’s nothing charming or plausible about this guy. Almost everybody has already sussed this out. Go away.

Mike Huckabee. Governor of Arkansas. Been there, done that. Next?

Rand Paul. Next?

Ted Cruz. He’s the guy you want to nominate if you plan to win the next presidential election. Just not this one.

Sarah Palin. I’m her biggest fan. She’d probably make a decent president. And she’s beautiful. My wise old granddad used to say of such women, “She can put her toothbrush in my valise anytime.” But she cannot, will never, be president.

Scott Walker. On the plus side, he has no college degree. On the minus side, he has that appalling, glaring bald spot. Doesn’t he know about the aerosol product that disappears a bald spot with paint? What else doesn’t he know? Wisconsin is its own fatal handicap.

Donald Trump. Pullease.

Rick Santorum. See the candidate assessment above.

Lindsey Graham. Sure, she’s got the LGBT vote locked up, but I’m not sure the country is ready for a Lesbian president.

John Kasich. Ohio has produced multiple presidents. Not many good ones. Enough said.

Ted DeMint. Who?

Jeff Sessions. Haley Barbour with a functioning brain. It’s not enough. Country won’t elect a Deep South mushmouth.

Bobby Jindal. When is an Indian not politically correct enough? When he’s not a Native American but an Indian-American.

Rick Perry. All right. I’m thinking. Give me a few more months. But I’m liking the glasses.

George Pataki. I wouldn’t mention him except that I used his picture up top. Now I’ve mentioned him. Are we done yet?

Almost. One more hopeless semi-candidate on the list.

Mitt Romney. Famous for indecision. He decided absolutely this time that he wasn’t running for president. Then he allowed as how he might be persuaded to reconsider. Really?

So here’s what I’m prepared to do. I’ve invited Mitt Romney to brunch at the Green Room in the Hotel DuPont. While we feast on crab legs, eggs Benedict, and pre-noon champagne (meaning me, not the Mormon prig), I will keep repeating the adverb “really” until he gets it. I swear.

Maybe someday they’ll come for us. God knows, I’ve said some bad things about Obama. But I’ve only two points to make today.

First, you can see that we live in the saucy rump of the Garden State, in the least populated part of the least populated county in New Jersey. Also the Jersey county that saw the most action, apart from Trenton, in the Revolutionary War. We had Mad Anthony Wayne here, and the Queens Rangers, the Hancock Bridge Massacre, and a heroic stand at Quinton Bridge. We may be rural and a bit backward, but we’re America.

Right now the wind is howling, but it will come to nothing. It hardly ever does. The Delaware River perpetually covers our ass, exposed as it looks. Storms — thunder, snow, whatever — sweep through Delaware headed east and, voila, they find their furor blunted by the mighty river between them and us. We’re promised six inches of snow and we get one. We’ve lived here for ten years and nothing predicted has ever been as bad as promised. Not even hurricanes. Which just knock down a few branches. Eerie.

I know. If God wants to knock us for a loop, he will. Just saying, so far he hasn’t. People can laugh that we’re the ass end of New Jersey, but we’re — so far — the kind of booty everyone wishes they had.

Point number two. When the time comes, we’ll head south. Where you’ll find us. In a sanctuary at Cape May Point.

Why go there? Because church. Not to hide. But to profess faith. We were married in an Episcopal Church. We’d prefer to die there as well. There’s a haunting icon at Cape May Point called St. Peter’s by the Sea.

You’ll find us there. When the time comes. Get ready. Won’t be here long. Writers are all screwups. If you can’t make it, think of this place before you nod along.

Everybody knows pugs are the cutest. Then this THING shows up. She weighs more than me, so I can’t bump her out of the way. I own the Boss’s hip, but he doesn’t let me sit there anymore. It’s always, “Eloise, get up in your spot.” So I have to sit on top of the couch instead of on his hip. What does “allergic” mean? I don’t know. Just because his upper lip swells?

Why does the Boss like the big guy and the little bitch so much?

Everybody knows pugs are the cutest. See?

Oops. Gave myself away. Everything’s a joke. That’s the setup and the punchline.

The president is a joke.

Our foreign policy is a joke.

Our domestic policy is a joke.

And the smartest people on earth, the Jews, don’t know it.

Nuclear war awaits. Total economic collapse awaits. Constitutional annihilation awaits. Some of us are prepared to risk the entire U.S. for Israel.

Who was I kidding? It really is all a joke.

Or. If you’re a Jew who knows what I’m talking about, wants to save Israel and turn back the tide of anti-semitism that’s sweeping the world, then comment here.

Why do I care? Julian. Who won’t even talk to me now. Because he’s another lefty softy.

There are apologists. Won’t cite them here. Jews are way too smart to be persuaded by simple goy logic.

Lots of idiots involved here. Including all the Republicans and conservatives on book tours who agreed to be mouse-trapped by a third-rate intellect who had control of editing, graphics, and the inevitable WTF punchline. What were you thinking? How could you not lose on the teevee?

More idiots. Even conservatives seem to be conceding that they were unable to mount an effective counter example of news satire. Really? Guess none of you ever stay up late.

Fox’s Redeye is far funnier and more intellectually challenging than the Daily Show ever was. Turn, twist, turn, wit, actual observation, all the way through. Gutfeld is at least three times as smart as the WTF phony. He’s witty enough that he’s scalding and hilarious without having to be bleeped. If he ever holds a pencil, he drops it without a tap. And his guests amazingly rise to him and the occasion. It’s on at 3 in the morning. Still beats MSNBC and CNN in Prime-time ratings. How could that be? Redeye is actually not a ritual of partisan skewering but something else. Something called funny.(!)

All this week, the MSM have been lamenting the loss of Jon Stewart. And the right wing New Media have been grousing about the praise. As if conservatives have no counter-programming of their own and no sense of humor to compete with the great Jon Stewart. Bull.

Redeye, not the Daily Show, is the edgiest news comedy show on television. Get your head out of your asses, conservatives. This is an arena in which you’ve won and you don’t even know it.

Sigh.

Your lives may be grey, but ours never will be. We’ve had the privilege of beauty in our lives. An unmatched pleasure. Color is its own reward.