I had to keep stopping myself from singing this at work today.

Not feeling good at all tonight. It's too late in the evening to call anyone. It feels sooooo much later than it really is. I hope this passes quickly. I don't want to spend the rest of the winter feeling like this.

On top of it, Bob isn't doing well. He's our thirteen-year-old brittany spaniel. My mom is saying he's wobbly as hell, like he's had a stroke; he did have his leg broken a few months ago and never has fully regained everything, but now he's even skipping dinner and morning dog treats my mom brings him, which he usually scarfs right up. It just doesn't look good.

I'm off to try and find something that will help me shake this. A round of Buffy on playstation, perhaps.

Inspired by a friend's phone call last night, who I won't name but will allow to discuss her own issues, I'm going to come out with a few things that have been on my mind lately but that for some reason, I haven't mentioned.

And when I do this, I always begin by saying the same thing: I don't get lonely. I like living alone, I like the solitude for the most part, and I do not enjoy sharing my living space. But this time of year seems to get to me -- the endlessly grey, dreary skies, the constant cold... temporary weather-related (read: winter) depression is pretty well accepted as a real phenomenon, and although I didn't think it was going to do much to me this year, I realized on Sunday night that I've actually been down for some time and it just hadn't dawned on me how I'd been feeling. I don't know how I feel about that, but... moving on.

I was burning a CD for the car, and as I was rearranging the songs, it occurred to me that the songlist played like music for a wake... if there is such a thing. I had to remind myself that it reflected how I was feeling, as is usually the case with whatever I'm listening to, and that told me what I needed to know.

Other things go into it too. We're over a month into the new class and I'm still intimidated, as though last semester wasn't a "real" class, but now we're expected to really know our shit (in fact, our instructor has escalated things quite a bit, much to our unending shock).

Over the last few months, I have become awfully smitten with a good friend at work who is completely, completely unavailable, although she never sees fit to stop being fun, charming, and gorgeous. I have good days and bad on that front, and little things count; if I'm particularly busy, I won't think about it as much. But the next day, she'll have straightened her hair or something, and I'm jolted back to. Listening to things like this doesn't help, especially when it incites tears on the drive home. I'm not going to do anything and I probably won't even talk much more about it, but as bright as she can make the days, I sure do come away feeling shitty sometimes.

I really, really wish I had a talent that was visible. That's most of my problem right there: everything's underneath.

It's difficult to keep in mind how good things are for me overall. I have a mostly-decent job that's not in a warehouse, I make more $$ now than I ever have, and I'm pursuing a dream I've had for ages. If I could... you know, share it with someone, that'd be about as good as it gets.

I went over and saw the lady that does my taxes tonight, and believe it or not, I got even better news than I reported in my last entry.

My income tax refunds will still total $1302, but I was able to confirm that the tax "rebate" Congress approved recently will be $600 for me.

Here was the source of my confusion. The reports I'd read told me that:

1. People who make at least $3,000 and don't owe taxes come April get $300.
2. People who make less than $75,000 get $600.

Obviously, both apply to me, so which is it? My instinct tells me, look. It's the government we're talking about -- you're getting the little one. But my visit with the tax lady tonight proved me wrong. She explained that your rebate will equal your refund for 2007 up to $600, and the $300 amount applied more to low-income individuals which, much as it might seem otherwise, isn't me.

Add that to what's left of my refund from last year, and yes, I'll happily let all that sit in my savings account, drawing minuscule amounts of interest thanks to the current (Republican) administration.

Of course, the first thing that popped into my head was a Playstation 3; that's until a guy at work mentioned that the "cheap" version ($400) isn't backwards-compatible with PS2, only the $700 version is. So that's out, I don't give a shit out cool Blu-Ray looks.

What other goodies can I fantasize about? How about a 1-terabyte external hard drive, that'll store some serious midget porn. Every season of The L Word on DVD? Yes, I'll have some Alice action, please. A high-end digital video camera? Let's wait till a new girlfriend comes along... on that one.

Yes, in the end, my savings account will be the proud recipient of this fortuitous windfall, and I hope to let as much of it sit idle for as long as possible. The old boy scout comes through again.

My Federal income tax refund will be $1169, and my state refund will be $133.

Can I have those now, please?

I couldn't very well not tune in to NBC's revival of the series "Knight Rider," having been a huge fan of the series back in the early 80s. I'm not kidding you, K.I.T.T. was it, as far as I was concerned, and I was never, ever consumed with cars. But a car that could talk, had a red-swish frontal scanner, and could turbo boost over any obstacle had me checking out the front end of every black Camaro and Trans Am I saw to make sure I wasn't in the presence of greatness; I was about seven years old, mind you.

So when I heard NBC was bringing "Knight Rider" back, at first I was only lukewarm to the idea. I haven't regularly followed any show since Buffy went off the air in 2003. I've caught "Medium" and "Alias" here and there, and I've caught "The L Word" on DVD as soon as it "comes out," but other'n that, my TV tendencies have been limited to the Headlines sketches on Leno and the occasional Top Ten List on Letterman.

Something happened this weekend. Maybe it was the immediacy of the premiere, I can't really say, but for about two days now I've been psyched as hell about tonight's two-hour Knight Rider movie; even David Hasselhoff would be back for an appearance as Michael Knight. Having just finished the movie, I have a few thoughts.

The new car is great, but I don't like Val Kilmer. He's just a nut, he rubs me the wrong way more so than even Tom Cruise (fact, I don't even mind Cruise that much, but I know a lot of people think he's a pod person). On top of that, K.I.T.T.'s voice only sounded like Kilmer's part of the time. I know they had cast someone in the role and then replaced him with Kilmer relatively last-minute, but it didn't sound entirely consistent.

Also, the original K.I.T.T. had personality. This one seems to generate laughs (or at least grins) by being as robotic and oblivious to human emotion as possible. I'm sure they'll grow into the new character, and this is a whole new series, after all... see the Buffy entry below. It takes some time to find the niche. It's been a long time since I actually sat and caught an entire two-hour episode of anything without taping it first and maybe getting to it later, so I think the new show has a lot of promise. We'll see if they follow through with it, and if the series survives, given the current broadcast climate.

p.s. I did enter the Knight Rider sweepstakes on the NBC web site, all four times I was eligible, so I'll let you know if I win a K.I.T.T. replica or one of the three other Ford models they're giving away. Whee!

"You think you're wearing Valentine red, but you're really just covered in the blood of the loveless."

--- moi

My friend Jen recently hopped aboard the Buffytrain, and being a fan since late 1997 and one of the show’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders to this day, I couldn’t have been happier. Jen recently wrote a lengthy entry about what the Buffy-verse has come to mean to her (resembling art more so than most of the mindless fluff on TV these days), and I promised to do the same. Our perspectives, of course, will be very different, given that we joined the Scooby gang at much different times, but I think our end conclusions will be largely the same.

Looking back, it’s a wonder Buffy ever took off at all, and I don’t mean for the reasons you’re most likely thinking. First of all, it was a mid-season replacement, which actually meant something back in 1996 -- it meant your show was probably doomed. Typically, they didn’t do very well; they tended to be, by definition, backup series coming in to replace shows that had been canceled altogether. Also, most people were already too entrenched in their regular shows (that had begun on schedule) to give mid-season replacements much of a chance. Joss Whedon, creator of the series, was extremely dismayed by this, because the TV version of Buffy was where he’d hoped to realize the expectations he’d had for the Buffy movie, which, if you’ll remember, was an abysmal failure on all fronts.

The other thing working against Buffy’s upstart was... well, the first season just wasn’t very good. The writers hadn’t yet found their niche. Too many of the episodes were stand-alones, many of which were terribly cheesy (see: a murderous ventriloquist doll, a robot inhabited by a demon who escaped onto the Internet from his book-bound prison). And the budget was entirely too small, which meant many facets of the show were well under par even for a sci-fi/horror start-up. That goes double for the musical score, which sounded more like my brother’s Casio on a bored summer afternoon.

And this was a series that lasted seven seasons? Well, something had to change, and it certainly did. One thing working to the show’s advantage was that somehow, it had already become the flagship of that fledgling network we knew as The WB; no way would a show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” survive its mid-season replacement status (and a first season that didn’t find a path until the third to last episode) on a “real” network. More people were worried about The WB closing up shop than Buffy hanging up her stakes, primarily because of the many questions surrounding the viability of a fifth network coming into the fray. The predominant thinking at the time was that the market was already saturated with the four existing networks, Fox just having come into its own relatively recently, and so The WB had a difficult time finding investors and advertisers. But with the fortuitous arrival of “Dawson’s Creek” and “7th Heaven,” The WB was no longer a one-woman show, and we were assured (at least temporarily) that the network would be able to keep the lights on and Buffy would get a chance to redeem itself in Season 2.

It did so beautifully. Overnight (or over the summer, however you look at it), everything changed. They secured a budget; the music was professionally written; plots thickened and intertwined; a few of the cast members learned to act (Angel, anyone?); and the writers had finally, finally found their path. The second season began with one of the most inspired episodes of the series, “When She Was Bad,” exposing the characters not just as heroes, but as flawed, deeply layered human beings; and it ended with what remains my favorite episode(s) of its entire seven-year run, “Becoming” Pts. 1 and 2, in which the Slayer faces off against her great love and then sacrifices him for the greater good just as his redemption is complete.

Buffy was on a roll. The overwhelming success of Season 2 catapulted it into the press, and the viewership the show maintained during summer reruns almost matched the regular-season numbers despite the nearly three-month “hiatus” the show took in early 1998. Season 3 introduced a number of new characters, including a second Slayer and a mysteriously immortal member of the city council whose plans for Sunnydale were not what they seemed. It was this ability to branch out creatively (without relying too heavily on the cheese and overcooked demon infestations that would plague “Angel” from start to finish) that helped the series continually evolve, taking the characters seamlessly from one phase of their lives to the next.

Then, Columbine happened. April 20, 1999 is a day no one alive at the time will forget. Unfathomably, the tragedy would even impact the Buffy universe, much to the dismay of millions of roaring Slayerettes who didn’t see the connection between Littleton, Colorado and their favorite stake-wielding heroine. But the massacre prompted the producers of Buffy to postpone that night’s episode, “Earshot,” in the interest of sensitivity. Turns out one of the more depressed students was scripted to climb the school’s clock tower with a high-powered rifle and open fire, and the source material, fairly or not, was deemed inappropriate, given the state of things. All debates aside, the network agreed, and “Earshot” wasn’t aired until months later, during the summer hiatus, long after the season finale (which was also postponed for similar reasons). The publicity the show received during the endless Internet forum discussions as to the necessity of episode postponement only brought the show’s viewership to higher levels.

The press’s hunger for all things Buffy didn’t always work to the show’s advantage, however. The Angel-centric subplot introduced toward the end of Season 3 was completely robbed of its suspenseful build-up by the network’s announcement that Angel would be spinning off the following season and occupying the adjacent time slot. So the question was never whether the Slayer would be able to save the vampire, the only question was how she would pull it off. It was poor timing on the part of the studio, and an unfortunate coincidence that came at the expense of the very thing Buffy was known for: its heartfelt, grab-and-don’t-let-go plot lines.

If I ever, even temporarily, fell off the Buffy wagon, it was during Season 4, which remains to this day my least favorite of the seven. A number of things went into this, not the least of which was the fact that the University's cable provider in Kirksville at the time had decided to drop its WB affiliate beginning in the fall of 1999. I couldn’t have tuned in if I’d wanted to. I graduated in December and went back home with half the season already behind me. My brother couldn’t find some of the tapes he’d used and claimed the episodes were recorded in no order anyway; we were much less cooperative in those days. I remember feeding my face at the kitchen table one night and realizing with only passing interest that the season’s story arc was climaxing right in front of me, and I could hardly be bothered. I’d already missed so much that I wasn’t up to speed, and besides, wasn’t there one episode left still? There was, and oddly enough, it wound up being one of the most bizarre (and still one of my favorite) season finales to date.

Meanwhile, the “Angel” spin-off lost me halfway through the pilot episode. I made the foolish mistake of assuming that, with Joss Whedon helming this project as well, we were in for some of the same fresh, inspired, emotionally-laden action and storylines that had made Buffy so successful. I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Angels’ clients were invariably dainty, helpless, squeaky-voiced tarts I couldn’t see stepping on a cockroach, let alone taking on a dirty landlord. But Angel intervening to even the odds didn’t make me care, either. Every week, there was yet another green-faced, pointy-headed demon with horns and fangs behind every dastardly plot, lurking around every corner, just waiting to have its purple blood splattered on the wall by some mystical weapon Angel had been given... by a green-faced, pointy-headed demon with horns and fangs, this one serving as comic relief, ripping off cheesy one-liners and nervously tripping over a trash can as he exited stage left. The demons, creatures, and foul beasties out walking around must have outnumbered the humans 10 to 1, which is a stretch even for Los Angeles. The (very) occasional Buffy-Angel crossover episode was the only justification I saw for tuning in to this mess.

But back in Sunnydale, the show, in its fifth season, would rebound beautifully from what was, in my own opinion, a very poorly-conceived storyline from the previous year. Buffy and the gang leaving for college at the beginning of Season 4 had given the writers a remarkable chance to expand their horizons and take the show in new directions... and that was what they did with it? Never fear, because this time around, the Scoobies were about to meet who would easily become the most powerful and formidable enemy to date in the form of Glory, who I’ll leave to the imaginations of those who haven’t made it that far. The already overwhelming story arc included several new character expansions, a death in Buffy’s family that would bring monumental consequences, and the return of an old enemy who could perhaps be persuaded to change his ways.

One thing any regular Slayerette will quickly discover is that Joss Whedon will kill your characters. He won’t do it regularly, and he usually reserves such story-related jolts for the finales, but in Season 5 he had a double incentive: by the time they shot the finale, it had already been announced that the series was leaving The WB and dropping anchor at... UPN???

As shocked (and dismayed, although they’d never admit it) as many fans were, that was the deal struck by the show’s producers, who were no longer satisfied with the cut The WB was giving them. So when the show’s contract came up, they began flirting it up with other networks, and they got a few bites. ABC and Fox both put in bids to take over the show’s schedule, but unbelievably, UPN would outbid those two giants in the industry and take over for at least two seasons, beginning in the Fall of 2001. Joss Whedon had, then, reached a point of no return for his current storyline, and as you’ll see, he took full advantage of it and left The WB with a bang no one could have expected. “Angel,” on the other hand, would stay put at The WB, all but squashing hopes for the possibility of any more crossover episodes.

Season 6, the first at UPN, is often reviled as one of (if not the) least-liked seasons of the entire series; even some hard-core fans said it was too depressing and dark even when dealing with the encroaching realities the Scooby gang was facing at the time. Yes, they understood, this was no longer high school; and yes, they understood Real Life was finding its way into everything. But can’t we still have our fun, witty, perky birthday puppy named Buffy whenever we want her? I personally find it hard to imagine a season that brought us a musical episode of Buffy, entitled “Once More With Feeling”—nothing less than a shamelessly upbeat celebration of the unmitigated success the show had become—could be seen as anything but a favorite among favorites. Yes, the Scoobies faced some trials, a few deaths, and glimpsed the unseemly sides of their own personalities, but in retrospect, isn’t the show’s grasp on our heartstrings what really pulled us in to begin with?

“Once More With Feeling” was the longest episode of the entire series, clocking in at 50 minutes instead of the usual 44. The network aired it in its entirety the first time around, but for its encore performance a week later, it was trimmed down to fit into the time slot. The full 50-minute episode was never rebroadcast in the U.S. The original plan was to exclude the musical from the Season 6 DVD set and make it available separately, but that became a short-lived fantasy as the fan based exploded in protest; the producers quickly relented. “Once More With Feeling” is the only episode with its own soundtrack, and contrary to much speculation, the actors indeed performed all their own vocals for the episode.

The sixth season is a perfect example of how wonderfully the series rebounded even when it fell so terribly short of fans' expectations. One of the major complaints with that year’s storyline was its overreliance on Willow’s burgeoning magical abilities, the script’s overuse of spells and charms to get the Scoobies out of practically any jam. Fans complained that the show was beginning to more resemble The WB series “Charmed” than the quick-thinking vampire slayer they’d come to know – and the writers responded. They took their handy yet irresponsible deus ex machina and transformed it into a major plot obstacle for Willow, one that would have dire consequences for her and all her friends, and one that would run headlong into the most unexpected season finale of the show’s entire run.

The Season 7 opener aired with the audience fully aware that this was Buffy’s last go-round. Others hadn’t been so lucky; the story goes that Alyson Hannigan (Willow) first learned of the show’s cancellation by reading about it in a magazine. True or not, the announcement had been made, and any Slayerette worth his or her salt knew what this meant with Joss Whedon in the driver’s seat: anything can happen, anyone can die, and if we’d learned nothing else, it’s that someone—or a few someones—probably would.

As usual, the show didn’t disappoint. The season’s story arc came into full bloom much earlier than in previous seasons, with balls-to-the-wall action sequences taking place every week rather than waiting for the finale. Villains were much more primal and powerful than we’d ever seen, and clearly, much more was on the line than ever before, never mind the Master’s ascension or Glory’s interdimensional takeover. But even in the surrounding hullabaloo, the series never forgot what it was that had attracted so many viewers over the last seven years. We weren’t tuning in to see the fights, the monsters, the dustings, the vampire hordes; we tuned in because we had a relationship with the characters, and their connection with each other was absolutely what made the series go. There’s simply no denying that dealing with all things unholy and inhuman did nothing to diminish the very humanity that drew us in to begin with. If the crux of the series had simply been the creatures and the battles for survival, the show would have amounted to nothing more than a contemporary version of “Xena: Warrior Princess,” a program that was often compared to Buffy but that never, ever, ever measured up. As it was, it may not have seemed the deepest of wells on the surface, but the beauty of the world of Buffy was what lay well beneath, out of sight of those only offering a passing glance.

The last episode of Buffy aired on May 20, 2003, my 28th birthday. I stayed home and made steak (that’s stake). Even after it was over, even after I’d aired my complaints about the finale (how could it only be one hour long?), and even though it ended with a question, I knew I’d been a witness to something. A phenomenon like Buffy is easy to dismiss as fluff, as a mindless weekly getaway people get too wrapped up in. But like those who disparage various genres of music without listening to them, people who dismiss Buffy without seeing it are to be pitied for their lack of open-mindedness. As with anything, what you get from the experience depends on you—but unlike anything else, your experience with Buffy is and will always be uniquely yours. No two people will experience these seven years of life the same way, but everyone will see themselves in these characters at some point. It happened to me all the time. It may not be real life, but it certainly is about real life—about finding the glass half full, about seeing the forest despite the trees, and sometimes, about not having your cake and not eating it, either. No one said being the Slayer was easy.

Welcome to the Hellmouth, Jen. You’ve got an awful lot to look forward to.

It's being uttered all across the Midwest, Numb Trolleybusers. Winter indeed sucks my ass, and it's not showing any signs of slowing.

I'm just writing to complain about the weather, really. The past several winters haven't amounted to a whole hell of a lot, a few episodes here and there notwithstanding (I'm thinking specifically of the Ice Storm of 2002). Yeah, we've had winters and such, but this is by far the worst one since I graduated college in 1999.

I saw on the news the other night some kind of comparison chart for this year vs. past winters. They tallied up what they called "winter events," meaning everything from flurries all the way up to ice storms. The winter of 99-00, we had eight events in Kansas City; average events in a winter season is fourteen; so far this season, we've had twenty-three. Tomorrow's minor freezing drizzle in the early afternoon hours will bring us to twenty-four, and it'll only be February the 11th. Shoot me now.

How is it these fucking winter events always seem to land on a Monday or Wednesday, when I'm driving 35 miles to class in the evenings? It never fails. And it's never just snow anymore, it's always freezing rain, freezing drizzle, or sleet, things guaranteed to keep me off the roads regardless of the fact that school most certainly isn't closing. I thought global warming was supposed to be taking care of shit like this, despite what the Republicans tell us.

I remember winters just a few years ago that I barely noticed at the time. One, in particular, during which I was unemployed and rarely left my apartment, was fantastic by winter weather standards because I didn't have to deal with anything that was going on out there, which still wasn't much. And I also remember having 16-degree daytime highs for a string of twelve or thirteen days. So I understand that winters come in all shapes and sizes. I just wish this one would GO THE FUCK AWAY, because I'm damn sick of dealing with it every. single. Monday. and Wednesday.

GO THE FUCK AWAY.

I just dread winter. Every year, right after Thanksgiving, it occurs to me that we're in for another four months of hell. Four months. That's a third of a year. What the hell is this, Canada? GO THE FUCK AWAY.

I don't like you, and I'm breaking up with you. It'll be worth springing forward, as long as it's actually spring.

This pretty much says it all, to me.

This is so full o' shit, I had to post it.

bush the beatboxer

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The first comment here on Numb Trolleybus came from my gay sex partner Adam, who mentioned my stat counter may be wonky. This was based on my comment that a certain turd burglar in Jersey might visit my page five, six times a day, and Adam said what was wonky was how the counter tallied his hits.

So I'm looking at my stats page for the old blog, and the graph does indeed differentiate betwixt page loads, unique visitors, and returning visitors; it also lets me set the cookies to expire at whatever intervals I choose so that it will or won't count the same person as a unique visitor, based on the length of time between page loads.

Page loads labeled Mays Landing, New Jersey total 55 since December 11. That's far more than anyone else. There are many days with three and four hits in the same day, sometimes in the same hour. Bearing in mind that December only had seven entries (four of them in the same day), and that January had exactly one, I'd say we've got quite the little gay obsession going on up there in New England.

Oh wait -- Jersey isn't considered part of New England. But it used to be. Does that make them ex-Patriots? ;)

I guess I haven't been sufficiently vocal about the upcoming February 14th, because tonight I was hit in the face with this.



Happy St. Blackheart's Day to you too, as an old friend would say.

See ya!

Romney "suspends" his campaign, allowing him to keep his delegates for the time being; McCain all but assured the Republican nomination.

'Tis a joyous day. May we never see another candidate of his ilk.

It started out as a fanciful, wouldn't-it-be-cool type idea, voting for John McCain because my disdain for Romney's nutso-centric political leanings ran so deep. After all, it didn't even occur to me to do so until the night before the primary.

But as the hours passed and I thought it over more, I began to realize that Romney losing was what I really cared about this go-round. Voting Democrat in the primary amounted to a coin toss, and I wanted to make my vote as meaningful as possible.

So I voted for what I really cared about, and it seemed at the time as though the only way to vote against Romney was to vote for McCain. To my unending glee, I was wrong, but the end result was the same.

It turns out Romney wasn't the "other guy" in the Republican primary, he was the "other other guy." Who the hell saw Mike Huckabee coming? The answer must be no one. I hadn't heard anything about his campaign in weeks, and in fact, I had all but forgotten there would be names on the ballot that weren't McCain's or Romney's.

I have to admit it was very, very surreal picking up a Republican ballot. I approached the table in the tiny city hall building in my hometown, knowing before I arrived that I would know everyone in the building. The ladies greeted me like they hadn't seen me since the last election, I showed my driver's license, because that's the rule, and the lady on the end pointed to three stacks of ballots, saying, "Libertarian, Democrat, Republican."

I reached for a Republican ballot, hoping no one was watching. I immediately felt dirty. I wanted to explain, to let them know that I don't ever vote Republican, I was just making a deal with the devil this once so we could avoid the real problems that would come with replacing one religious nut with one who dwarfs him.

But I said nothing, and as soon as I slid the ballot off the table, my embarrassment changed to guilt, like I was doing something with the system not intended to be done. In another instant, the guilt was gone and replaced with a very spicy satisfaction at having turned the devil's own weapons against him. I'd apparently forgotten that a Presidential primary includes no other votes, so I completed the arrow next to John McCain's name and scooted out the door with no one the wiser.

As I drove to work, it occurred to me that my picking up a Republican ballot was hardly out of place in a town where so many of those hilljacks have voted red for generations. I kept an eye on the news reports all day with very little coming out until around dinnertime; by the time I left work at 8:30, we were starting to get some idea of where the delegates were going. When I went to bed after midnight, it was clear they didn't need my help after all: Romney had all but fallen through his shorts. He took a small handful of states that don't matter and was thrashed in states that do, Missouri being one of them. For a while it wasn't clear whether McCain or Huckabee would take MO, but we knew Romney wouldn't, and since that's the only part of the process I could participate in, that was all I could reasonably do.

Romney announced today that he would press on until the convention, so going forward, his campaign will amount to little more than a source of perverse entertainment for me as I watch him flush more money and effort on a cause I'm grateful is lost. As Republicans go, I can actually stomach McCain, even though his election will still be the worst-case scenario of the ones that remain. In the meantime, sanity (or something resembling it) can breathe a bit more easily.

I'm torn, folks. With tomorrow's Presidential primaries on everyone's mind, I have to admit I'm torn not between candidates, but -- and I never thought I'd hear myself say this -- I'm torn between parties.

Before anyone hangs themselves, let me stress right off the bat that I am not turning Japanese Republican. Oh, no. I wouldn't cast a vote for a Republican in a Presidential election if he was running against Osama bin Laden (I'd probably just stay home). The truth is that, while I always, always vote Democrat (primarily because I like to work, but also because I prefer an administration that doesn't force its religious convictions down the population's collective throat), I would almost certainly be happy with either Hillary or Obama. I'd prefer Hillary, myself, but I'm worried that she might be too polarizing; so many people feel so terribly strongly about her one way or the other, that I'm afraid if she was nominated, enough Democrats would be disgusted enough to stay away from the polls on Election Day and we'd wind up handing another four years to the jackasses that have put us in Iraq unnecessarily, and who, like it or not, were on duty when 9/11 happened.

So in any case... oh yes, torn between parties. The Democratic candidate will take care of itself. What I'm really worried about is who will be receiving the Republican nomination, because let me tell you, folks... as unpopular an opinion as this may be, I am absolutely petrified of the mere thought of a Mormon president.

It's been called "anti-Mormon bigotry" in many an editorial; historians insist there must be "no religious litmus test" for presidential candidates. But while Obama opponents "don't want a [n-word] running the country," and Clinton opponents "don't want a bitch running the country," my Romney-related fears are grounded in much stabler logic. Two paragraphs ago, I expressed my desire to avoid living in a theocracy. The Bush administration has pushed so-called "moral issues" to the gagging point and funded enough faith-based programs to give the Taliban a run for their money. They use their "faith" and their "moral sense" to try to deny women their absolute right to reproductive freedom and to continue to deny equal treatment under the law to anyone a little different from them, e.g. gay people. And this is just Bush, a Methodist.

Is there anyone among us who doesn't think a Mormon would be ten times worse? No religious litmus test, indeed.

Coincidentally, I've actually seen people go from the Methodist church to Mormonism. I've seen a guy go from a free-thinking individual to a pre-programmed religious zealot incapable of beginning a sentence with anything but a quote from the Book of Moron Mormon. Everything is a moral issue -- everything, bar none. Books and movies that exist strictly for entertainment purposes are verbally lashed for "sending the wrong message," when clearly, anyone with a functioning brain stem can make up his own mind about whether such a "message" even exists.

No, religious and moral superiority on the part of the Conservative base is bad enough the way it is. We cannot -- absolutely cannot -- afford to elect the most conservative of all Western religions to the office of President. Is my friend (above) a universal yardstick for the behavior of all Mormons? Of course not. Can we afford to take that kind of a chance with the office of President? Same answer.

That is why I'm seriously considering voting not for Hillary or Obama in tomorrow's primary, but for John McCain. I never thought I'd vote Republican in any instance, but this is what it's come to.

The number one priority for me is to keep Mitt Romney out of the Presidential race. If one's "values" are reason enough when choosing (or un-choosing) a candidate, as they were in 2004, it should be enough that Romney's values don't match mine, and he therefore won't earn my vote. I'll admit that it seems backwards to go to the polls to vote against someone, but I've simply had it up to here with having personal morals dictated to me by an elected official who wields no such right. I must do all I can -- vote, in this case -- to keep the religious crazy out of office. I just won't be right with myself if I don't do absolutely everything possible.

I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this, for the record.

After nearly three years of password-protected blogging, I'm coming back from the underground. I decided it was time to reinvent things, as I do periodically. My readership had dwindled to three regulars plus one or two occasionals and a really, really gay guy from New Jersey who, according my stat counter, might visit my blog up to five times in the same day. Hi, Adam. The Va-Giants still suck.

It was hard to get into blogging with such a tiny readership, no matter how important the audience members certainly are. You all understand what I mean. But those days are over; we're coming back out into the sun, and I have to admit, that part feels pretty good.

I'll be moderating comments for the duration, unfortunately; I just can't have anything personally identifiable being posted without my knowledge beforehand, so bear with me on that front. If you want to link to me on your blog, I only ask that you do so quietly, without announcement.

And thank you for sticking with me. Welcome to the Numb Trolleybus.