there was a young woman from boobville ...

-- URGH. My tummy still hurts like a bastard. I kinda want to stay on my couch all day AGAIN and not do anything or go anywhere, which is depressing as hell considering I've spent so many of the last few days here even when I wasn't wracked with stomach cramps. The second I feel better I'm getting out of this house and going ... I don't know, just somewhere that's not here.

-- McCain: I Can't Promise To Support Palin For President. Ouch.

-- The great thing about not feeling well and not having to go to work until next Monday is that I have rum balls in my fridge that I haven't eaten yet and I could totally sit here all day and pig out on them. Not that I'm going to, but the option's nice.

-- If Twilight Was 100 Times Shorter and 100 Times More Honest. And yet I'm still sorely tempted to go see it, although I think that's more because I haven't gone to the movies in months.

-- Today's writing goal is five thousand more words on GPW. With seven days until I have to go to work again and thirty-five thousand words or so to go, that'll work out perfectly. And if I can get them done early, I can work on knitting for the rest of the day.

OCTOBER 23--Shortly before a John McCain campaign volunteer was reportedly robbed at knifepoint and had a "B" carved in her face after her assailant noticed that her car carried a McCain bumper sticker, the woman blogged last night that she was "Stubbornly searching for a bank of america to avoid ATM fees" and had somehow ended up "on the wrong side of pittsburgh."

You know, that sucks if it's true. But I say "if it's true" because as jrosestar pointed out, the B is carved backwards, as if someone were ... say, looking in a mirror when they did it to themselves.

Then again, maybe watching five million Law and Order episodes has turned me into a suspicious bastard.

*

EDIT: Meet Rick Reilly's fantasy football partner: Barack Obama.

I don't even like football, but that's goddamn awesome.

I get cautiously optimistic every time I go over to electoral projection sites like FiveThirtyEight.com, Electoral Vote.com, and Election Projection and see that most of them are projecting about 350 electoral votes to Obama and about 180 to McCain, depending on the site. And then I pull myself back by thinking of that photo of Truman holding the "Dewey Defeats Truman" paper. It ain't over 'til it's over, you know?

Then again, hearing things from conservatives in the media like that I'm not a "real American" because I'm voting for Obama -- regardless of the real American vagina I came out of, the real America I've lived in since exiting said vagina, and the real America I've paid taxes to since I got my first job after the sixteenth anniversary of exiting said vagina -- makes me worry.

I think that if I'm not a real American, I must be an imaginary American, and therefore my life doesn't include nearly enough wizards and dragons. Hmph.

see more funny political pictures

( A few more that made me laugh )

*

Oh, and I watched the fourth Indiana Jones movie. That was ... kinda awful, actually.

Factoid Of The Day:

Joe the Plumber has now had more press conferences than Sarah Palin.

In less amusing news, reading about the airquotes McCain put around "health" when speaking about the health of the mother in regards to abortion arguments makes me rageful. Oh, you WOMEN. Always whining about your desire to live.

Here's the thing that amuses me about Governor Palin getting booed at the Flyers game. It's not that people were being douchebags because ... well, that kind of sucks. It's that either she didn't know hockey fans can be raging douchebags about anything that gets in the way of their hockey (and I say this as somebody who has a family full of hockey fans but, yes, God, THIS), in which case I'd maybe appreciate it a little bit if she'd stop being so, "Oh, gosh, isn't it cute I'm from Alaska?" and call herself a "soccer mom" like everybody else, OR she did know and she brought her poor kid down to share in the fun of sports fans acting like assholes.

Of course, the thing that doesn't amuse me is the comparison between Palin being booed by loudmouthed douchebags at a hockey game and Obama being called an uppity secret Muslim terrorist who needs killin' at political rallies. Look, as long as Palin gets off the ice within five minutes and doesn't get in the way of the Flyers getting anywhere near the playoffs, anything these people say about her is pretty much bullshit. Hockey fans -- and let's be honest, sports fans in general -- say some dumb crap, but there's a major difference -- sports fans have not spent the past eight years being given the impression that it's arguably acceptable to kill hockey moms.

( Cut for length and political ramblings. )

From cambler, here:

McCain wants to postpone the debate until next week, and just push off the VP debate.

How about a compromise? Switch them.

Do the VP debate on Friday. The venue is prepared and all is good to go. Then, do the big debate next week in the VP debate's time slot - also prepared.

And then, you see, we'll get to see if the VP candidates are, indeed, ready to take over on a moment's notice.

Discuss. AND SHARE!

John McCain suspends his presidential campaign due to the current economic crisis, suggests Obama do the same.

Yes, because I'm sure what Congress is really desperately in need of to solve this problem is for two senators who've spent the last year running for president to show up. That's what they've been missing. Not a more detailed plan, something vaguely resembling actual oversight, and maybe more than ten fucking minutes before the session ends to figure out what the hell to do.

EDIT: "It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama said in a news conference in Clearwater, Fla. "It's going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once."

YES, THIS. I want a president who's not only willing but able to multi-task. I don't think I'm asking for anything too complicated here.

*

Last night at the fair I won a Beanie Baby fox. I just took it out of the bag it was in and threw it in Otis's direction, fully expecting him to ignore me and it.

He's just spent the past fifteen minutes attacking it as if it insulted his mother.

According to the New York Times, the McCain campaign didn't get a chance to vet Governor Palin, chose her due to pressure from anti-abortion conservatives, and now they're left scrambling.

Supposedly the McCain camp was torn between Lieberman (eh) and Ridge (who I thought was okay as governor), but ...

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Let's be honest. This doesn't exactly sound like an out-of-this-world bullshit conspiracy theory like some Palin-related things that have popped up the last few days. As douchey as Lieberman can be, both he and Ridge trounce Palin in pretty much every arena necessary for presidential viability. Well, unless you believe you have the right to decide what goes on in another woman's uterus.

And then there's this: McCain opposes federal spending to prevent teen pregnancy. Which is kind of, "Well, DUH," but on the same token, coming off the latest scandal to hit his campaign it makes him look like a first-rate jackass. (Unless you think whores deserve to be punished for being sluts, in which case, here! Experience the joy of life with this miracle of a baby who makes your life worth living! Oh, wait ...)

... and no, it's not because she's conservative. (Hell, who else was he gonna pick? Pelosi?)

I don't like her because he's goddamn old.

Here, let me explain. I've already seen reference to what the 2016 election season is going to look like if it turns into Biden vs. Palin. I honestly don't think they're planning ahead that far, I really don't. I think Palin was chosen for her politics, for her possible appeal to swing voters in this election, and ... yeah, because she's a woman. I do think there was a lot of, "Oh, let's see which old rich white guy McCain picks as VP!" going around and I don't doubt that that factored into it. And I don't blame him one bit.

I'd like to think that the campaign was thinking of the 2016 election when they picked her. The problem is that I don't think that they thought about the (possible) eight years in between. Suppose that Obama gets elected. Suppose (sadly enough) two months later he gets shot by some douchebag with a gun and a grudge against the first black president. Suppose that Joe Biden takes office. Like him or not, the man has been in politics for thirty-five years. (For the record, Sarah Palin was nine when he first went into politics.) He's practically bulging with experience in political matters.

My grandfather passed away when he was fifty-four. My grandmother went when she was sixty. My great-grandma died when she was about seventy-three. And all of them from natural causes. Now, McCain's family history is a little better than mine (his father was seventy when he passed away, but everybody else seems to have hit their late eighties or nineties), but the "heartbeat away from the presidency" line is exceedingly apt here. And I get the impression that nobody in his camp is bothering to point that out. I don't like Romney or any of the other possibilities that were bandied about, but at least I believed that if McCain dropped dead the day after the inauguration, they could easily step into the role.

You know what? Yes, Obama's experience is lacking. And so is hers. Here's the main difference ... *I* decided that regardless of his amount of experience, I prefer Obama. I like what he has to say, I like his plans for this country, I like his attitude and his presence and the way he makes me feel good about what this country can be. *I* picked *him*. And you did, and *you* did, and you did. (Well, okay, maybe not you.)

I did not pick HER. John McCain picked her, and I already don't trust his judgment.

And John McCain is goddamn old.

I'm not trying to start an argument or anything. I just ... I had to get that off my chest, I guess.

(Um, to offset the tone of the rest of my post, I had to stop somewhere in the middle to sing along when the theme to "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" came on my Internet radio.)

( Barack Obama's acceptance speech in its entirety. )

I love that man. And not just because his set design is obviously some sort of signal that he's secretly Zeus the Smiling Muslim Anti-Christ.

*rewatches*

*loves*

Oh, John McCain can't do that. (He can, however, choose Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. On one hand ... huh. On the other hand, considering she's even worse on the experience front than Obama -- and McCain just looooves knocking Obama on that count -- it rings of "Oh, hey, you have a vagina, don't you? Let's hook up!".)

-- An Outrageous Attempt by the Bush Administration to Undermine Women's Rights, by Sen. Hillary Clinton -- Good for her. I wish I could say I'm surprised they're trying to pull this shit, but after eight years I'm really not.

The snide comments about Obama not saying anything yet bug the hell out of me, though. Dude, he's in a war zone right now. With his political leanings, I highly doubt he's for it, and if he comes out before he comes back and condemns it people will jump on his back immediately to tear him to shreds for not focusing on being in a freakin' war zone. He needs to make a statement eventually, yes, but come ON.

-- The New York Times has rejected an essay that Sen. John McCain wrote defending his Iraq war policy. -- Which ... I mean, I don't like the guy, but I seriously don't think this one is news. Your editor sent your submission back with things s/he wants changed? Welcome to writing! On the other hand, I did kinda giggle a little with the "Let me give you a suggestion based on what Obama wrote ..." bit, because all I can picture is McCain grumbling and kicking his desk at that.

-- Batman star Christian Bale was arrested Tuesday over allegations of assaulting his mother and sister, police and British media said. -- Wait, what?

-- The post on Not Always right is titled "It Happens More Often Than You'd Think" (although, no, actually I believe it happens a lot):

(I just started working at a computer store, so my trainer has a phone call on speaker so I can listen in.)

Lady: “You sold me a faulty piece of s*** laptop!”

Trainer: “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”

Lady: “The f***ing thing won’t open!”

Trainer: “Have you tried turning the laptop around, and opening it from the other side?”

Lady: “Oh.” *click*

-- The 7 Most Bizarre Fast Food Industry Lawsuits

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-- The 9 Manliest Names In The World

-- The 5 Most Kick-Ass Apocalyptic Prophecies

-- 6 Questions The Last Harry Potter Book Had Better F#@king Answer -- Which is obviously an old article, but is still pretty funny. Particularly the part about Harry's morning-after. HEE.

-- 5 Sex Experts Who Made the World a Worse Place (To Do It)