My head feels like the terrorists have won.

Last Friday, we went to a friend’s house for dinner and the debate. My galpal was quickly driven out of the TV room by McCain’s smarmy opening gambit about Ted Kennedy’s hospitalization. Unable to sit still, she nervously cleaned our friend’s kitchen to a gleam it had not seen in years. Her Mrs. Clean efforts did not preclude periodic screams from the kitchen: “Do not agree with John McCain!” “Nail him now with the Savings and Loan scandal.” “Interrupt grandpa now!”

I tivoed the debate plan to play it when it’s time for a thorough cleaning of our own kitchen.

I had thought of sending Obama a case of Red Bull for the next presidential debate. His preternatural calm is highlighted by the desperate tics of John McCain, or as we call him in our house, “God Forbid.” Obama’s calm in the eye of the storm is his nature and as much as I would like him to squash McCain like a bug, it really is not the change he has called for. Despite my own post-debate despair, in many analyses Obama was judged the winner.

Next up is the vice-presidential debate. While Rove and Limbaugh, the diaxis of evil, have their old crank-yanker with the dicey health records hooked up to adrenalized life-support, they have their v-p candidate hooked up to the info-injection machine. She’ll be ready when they pull McCain’s plug, but for now you can just pull her neck string: “Putin rears his head, flies over, in the airspace, where does he go, Alaska.” Their Manchurian Candidate is deemed being-there brilliant. Just as eight years ago when the bar was set low for Bush, if Sarah Palin does not burst into flames, she will be proclaimed the winner.

We are staying home for the v-p debate. I am hoping to get a couple closets cleaned out. Speaking of closets, I predict gay marriage will stand in CA. The zeitgeist will be: Oh for god’s sake, it’s the end of the world, let the gay people get married.