John McCain is Funny

McCain killed on "SNL" again, in addition to yet another solid guest spot on "The Daily Show" a couple weeks back (his 13th, right?). I'm sure he did it mostly to keep battling back the "old age" strike against him, which seems more and more like the one that'll sink him (though how much sharper than Reagan does he look? And more importantly, how much sharper than Bush?). But his successful performance reinforced one of the reasons I've remained so staunchly in support of McCain the last six months - he's funny.

I know that it's silly to feel that the ability to keep things light from time to time makes me want to vote for someone, but it really does. I liked Huckabee out of the gate because of it, and remain fond of him now despite deciding he wasn't the guy I wanted to be the man on the button. Here's why:

Remember when Al Franken started running for the Senate (hint: you don't) - the major questions he got asked, gets asked, is "why should a comedian be Senator?" And isn't that the question you'd ask?

The stump answer he gave was a good one: a comedian looks for hypocrisies and ridicules them, a politician looks for hypocrisies and ferrets them out. They require a similar mindset. He's not wrong, though I certainly wouldn't vote for Franken, even if I lived in Minnesota and was already voting for the Candidates of Last Resort.

A President, perhaps especially these days, is flooded constantly with both important issues and utter nonsense, and they have to sort out which is which. I want a President who knows that instinctively. You might think that a paltry thing to think about, but look at the reverse - candidates that seem to miss the joke seem to miss a lot else. A candidate seems viable when it seems they can think on their feet, because it convinces people that they can think on their feet when they're negotiating with Palestinian Defense Minister or the Senior General of Burma. Gore seemed more viable as a candidate when he loosened up after losing in 2000, it's no coincidence his name still comes up now even with two high-profile candidates battling out the Democratic nomination.

More importantly, look at those two candidates. Both have gone on "SNL" to ingratiate themselves with a younger generation, and yet neither seemed to have any real concept of how to tell a joke, or even what the joke was. As Hillary's campaign winds down, the accusation comes up that she isn't leaving the race because she doesn't have anything else after this, that this is the end of her political life and she's determined to cling to it desperately regardless of consequences. I don't fully buy it (I don't even fully buy that there are any real consequences), but I could buy it, and here's why - no matter the situation, she keeps trucking on through everything with a fake smile and a fake laugh, and so it doesn't seem totally out of character for her that maybe beneath the veneer there's someone who doesn't have any real idea when something has swung completely out of proportion.

And as a result, maybe in the end I do buy it. Not because I find her less than capable, but I think that maybe she doesn't have the ability to step back and see the forest for the trees. I start to think it possible that in the heat of the campaign, she could lose all perspective.

When I see a candidate on TV telling jokes about how old he is, I start to believe that the same situation would never really happen to him because he'd see it. He'd have that perspective. Because he knows where the joke is.

This is how my luck normally goes

In my excitement about getting a new car that has lasted a full two weeks now without any major accidents, loss of parts, engine failure, targeting in nuclear attacks, gang shooting (I was worried about that one), discovery the hard way of a history of steering wheel fires, noticing any drugs in any crevices, or being hijacked by someone who'd gotten amped from playing too much GTA 4, I forgot to mention that I saw the flip side the other day. Since I've had such a very good first two weeks, it's easy to forget that for every car I buy that works, I've bought ten of cars like these:


No, not that car there, not the one you can see. The car that's two cars in front of that one. The car that's putting out all the smoke, of which I got this shot at a point when the smoke was least obscuring my camera.

The amount of smoke was so drastic that I arrived at a 4-way stop, saw a long trail of smoke disappearing into oblivion, and decided that "I have to see what that car looks like." I turned and drove down the road after it, and though I never got a good shot of it, I can safely report that if you don't take care of Chrysler Le Barons, they can experience serious oil problems.

When I finally saw the car, I drove back down the road the other way to see how long the trail of smoke was. It was two miles before it even started to dissipate.

New Car

I hadn't posted this yet, and I feel like I need to point out that I've bought a car. Again.

You might be aware that I have bad luck with cars. Abysmal luck. Sure, some of it's been a little bit my fault - here's a link to part of the story - but mostly the gods have conspired against me. Still, each time I get a little bit better at this. So, here's the new one - it's an '01 Honda Civic, 80K, manual, and it's in great shape. Here's pictures:

This is what my car looks like, from behind, if I was driving away from you.

There's some sort of internal-combustion system in the front, if you like that sort of thing.


And this is me putting my undistracted cognitive powers to work inspecting the automobile.

Possible Cage Match?

Good news - my two least-favorite director's seem to be on their way to a fight to the death. After Uwe Boll called Michael Bay a "f***ing retard," Bay fired back that Boll was a "f***ing idiot." On the off-chance either of them ever get invited to the Oscars, we'll have to sit them on opposite sides of that no-talent section they have in the back so that fisticuffs don't break out, which would be rough for Bay because Boll is trained boxer, time that he could have spent learning to read above a fifth-grade level. I can see the headline "Asshole Talentless Director Kills Director Of All Those Movies You Hate." And it would save us from Transformers 2.