Since I’m still sick with the crud that just won’t quit, I’ve pretty much spent the day watching television and slipping in-and-out of consciousness. Meanwhile, my intermittent fever and codeine-laced meds have led to occasional confusion over whether I’m dreaming or not.

Like when I saw the “ShamWoW” commercial with the guy who’s wearing a headset while he talks about some cloth that supposedly holds 21 times its weight in liquids (much like my midsection does at least once a month).

Since I could see no reason why on earth he’d be wearing the headset — and since the guy looks a bit like a young Willem Dafoe, whom I’d been watching earlier in Platoon — I figured I must have dreamed the whole thing.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from later looking the things up on Amazon where I ran into one really freaking funny review.

I didn’t dream that, right? Amazon really left that one up, right?

Despite the would-be drama of last night, I went to bed early. Granted, I needed the sleep and, thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, I couldn’t have stayed awake even if I’d wanted. But even without painkillers for my injured knee I’d probably have gone to bed anyway. Having said my part and voted my way, I saw no reason for me to stay awake to witness the results. Truth is, after all of the hype and the let downs, by last night I just didn’t care.

Nor did I care this morning. Regardless of what goes on outside of my house, my mornings are devoted to my family’s routine: having coffee with VH, getting the Big-Eyed Boy up and ready for school, then actually getting him to school on time. Those moments are precious to me: they keep me sane. I wasn’t about to let anything interfere with that.

At some point, though, I did realize what had happened. I’m just not sure that I care. Like my knee — which has been injured and re-injured repeatedly over the past week to the point where it’s more numb than anything else — my mind feels mostly deadened by the drama leading up to yesterday.

And so, now what? The decision is made and the outcome was always a known possibility. It’s hard to get too upset over something you always knew could happen. To let it drag you down, to rail and weep about it, speaks of self-delusion more than anything else.

Me? I’ve always been the kind to hope for the best but to prepare myself for the worst, and to never let anyone talk me into confusing the two. Sure, some might speak against assuming the worst of things, but it’s my experience that one couldn’t actually make that assumption if the facts weren’t pointing toward it in the first place. So maybe that’s why I’m fine, although saddened, by what happened yesterday. Having expected it, having spent some time pondering its likelihood, even, there’s just nothing worth being upset about.

With respect to the election, I’ve read a lot of email from people today saying how angry and betrayed they feel. Their messages are rife with “if so-and-so had only…” hindsight, blame-shifting for the past while making cataclysmic predictions about the future. And, each and every one of them have asked, what do I think? My thoughts are simply this: it was what it was. What happened yesterday was heart-breaking, but it was also yesterday.

The art of living through yesterday is realizing that it isn’t really the end of anything at all but, rather, the beginning of a chance to set aside the drama and start something better.

Christopher Lee McCuin apparently has Hannibal Lecter’s tastes. Earlier this week the 25-year-old man from Tyler, Texas was arraigned on capital murder charges involving the death — and suspected consumption — of his girlfriend, Jana Shearer. He left the body for his mother to find in her garage.

But that’s not all he left at Mommy’s house:

Sheriff J. B. Smith said investigators found Ms. Shearer’s body with chunks of flesh cut out, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate of human flesh with a fork on the kitchen table in his mother’s brick home….

As if those facts weren’t drawing enough attention, PETA (the animal-rights activist group) wants to make sure McCuin never gets to indulge his apparent taste for flesh again. They’ve petitioned the jail demanding a vegetarian diet for McCuin, saying that it’s up to the Sheriff to keep McCuin from “contributing to any more suffering and death.” Moreover, PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich warned, the consumption of meat might make McCuin commit further violence.

To his credit, the Sheriff’s response to PETA at least appeared to take them seriously. He cited the Texas Commission on Jail Standards which has strict guidelines for the care and feeding of prisoners, even cannibals. Absent a medical reason, he explained, prison officials may not intentionally alter a prisoner’s meal.

But it wasn’t easy, Sheriff J.B. Smith said. “I kind’ve said ‘pfft’ in a very nice way.”

Very professional. I, personally, would’ve used a different four-letter word than pfft.

I’m not much of a Stephen King fan, but I recall reading VH’s copy of The Dark Half and being horrified by the premise: fetus in fetu or, in layman’s terms, an unborn twin growing within the host twin which contains organ systems, and sometimes even entire limbs or more.

The developmental abnormality is said to occur in 1 out of every 500,000 births. In cases where the parasitic twin is less developed — like when Aunt Voula in My Big Fat Greek Wedding talks of the tumor removed from her spine that turned out to have “teeth, and a spinal column” — they’re known as teratoma (which translates aptly as “monstrous tumor”).

So what do you call it when a 1-year-old girl has two deceased triplets — one complete except for limbs and the other with only a hairy head and part of its digestive system — removed from her abdomen?

I just call that gross.

A town mayor resigned from the office he’s held for 6 years now because he just remembered that he was abducted by Satanists and brainwashed, oh, 30 years ago or so.

No, I’m not making it up.

Centerton, Arkansas mayor Don Williams says his real name is Don LaRose, and at some point in the mid-70s he was a preacher in Indiana. He also happened to have a wife and two kids at the time. But, see, after the Satanists kidnapped him, he wound up changing his name and moving to Centerton.

He’s just now remembering thanks to the help of “multiple shock therapy treatments”, an injection of truth serum, and the support of his current wife.

Please feel free to write your own punchline to this story, folks. I seem to be a bit too flabbergasted to make one up myself.

At 102 years old, Nora Hardwick proves that you really are only as old as you feel… no matter how the rest of you looks. This great-great-grandma just posed nude for a calendar to help raise money for the Ancaster Athletic football team in Ancaster, Lincolnshire.

But don’t worry: she didn’t let it all completely hang out.

“They draped a bit of pink cloth around my shoulders, but at my age I just don’t have the model body to be taking it all off,” she told The Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper. “It was all very tastefully done. You couldn’t see any of the bits or anything.”

Apparently Mrs. Hardwick’s children — who range from 62 to 80 years old — applaud their Mum’s decision. Know what? I do too. As far as I’m concerned, having lived past 100 years old entitles Mrs. Hardwick to do just about anything she wants!

As a lover of history and cultural geography, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person. The kind who tries, if not embracing other viewpoints, then at least making room in my own perspective for them.

Then there are times when, despite my best efforts, I just can’t help thinking that some cultures are so radically different from my own that I’ll never in a thousand years be able to comprehend them.

Take, for instance, the traditional Hindu marriage ceremony of P. Selvakumar and his new bride. That’s her in the picture. As you may have noticed, she’s a bitch… and I mean that in the literal sense. That’s right: he married a dog.

It seems that 15 years ago or so, Selvakumar stoned two dogs to death then hung them in the tree. Now, on the advice of an astrologer, he’s atoning for his crime by wedding a stray dog selected for him by his family.

After the wedding, the happy couple shared a meal. Sort of. Selvakumar joined his family for a feast. The dog ate a bun.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication where the happy couple is registered, so I guess I won’t be sending them matching water bowls.

Being adopted, I’ve never really understood the fascination with genealogy that so many people seem to have. There are more than enough nuts in my adoptive family to convince me that it sprang from a wacky root, and I suspect that if I were to look into my own bloodline I’d lose the consolation of telling myself that I share no blood relation to the crazies.

Lynne Cheney might be regretting her fascination with such research these days, too, now that she’s discovered that Vice President Dick Cheney is related to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama – charismatic anti-war son of a black Kenyan goatherd and white Kansan mother – and Mr. Cheney – immensely powerful and very white Bush administration hawk – are eighth cousins, Mrs. Cheney said.

The Vice-President’s wife said the two men shared an ancestor, a 17th century immigrant from France named Mareen Duvall.

According to Mrs. Cheney, Mr. Obama – Hillary Clinton’s leading rival for the Democratic nomination – is a descendant of Mr. Duvall. The French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650s from England.

I don’t see any family reunions in the works, do you?