Real World Wednesday

Just to bring home an already proven point, here are the top stories that caught my eye on Yahoo today:

* The Spice Girls (is it 1996?)
* Tom Brady (at least it's not about his baby with Bridget Moynahan)
* The iPhone learns how to play well with others

There were bits of important, but these were the ones my eye darted towards at first glance. I clearly have a problem.

I've been going back and forth about whether, if I had more money,I would get cable tv. I claim that I'm "out of touch," because I don't have cable, but were I to subscribe (given that much needed "more money"), would I watch the news? No. I would make sure to watch Heroes and The Office when they are actually on. I would surely get addicted to one of those 1,052 reality television shows on MTV.

I think a better investment would be a newspaper subscription - that way, if I wasn't reading it, it would simply pile up and make a nice scrap pile for when I need to lay down newspaper so I can paint.

But the real topic of the day, seeing as there's clearly not enough news coverage of this, is the 2008 Presidential Election.

I got my absentee ballot in the mail and was (mildly) shocked to realize it's a compeletly local ballot. Of course, I know my California politics well enough to know we're nowhere close to the primary, but with all of the news coverage, with Al Gore's fans attempting to "draft" him into running, it seems that it's about time for me to have a say in who is actually going to be a candidate.

Currently in the news are three candidates (or fake candidates or possible candidates insisting they won't run).

1) Stephen Colbert
2) Rudy Giuliani
3) Al Gore

So, Stephen Colbert is a fictional candidate, but I wouldn't be suprised if he gets more votes than other candidates, simply on name recognition alone. I know that this shouldn't be a popularity contest, but when unknowns run against the likes of Barak Obama (who currently has three books as the primary author and is featured as a writer in another three), youngling though he may be, the odds aren't in the favor of the unknowns. All this to say that given the current pack of unknown conservatives and celebrity Democrats, Stephen Colbert has a shot at being the next man of the year.

Rudy Giuliani is in the news only because the governor of Texas has endorsed him. Why should I care about this? Apparently, it is of great importance to the nation whom the governor of Texas endorses. I wasn't aware of this important fact. Clearly, I have a lot to learn.

And finally, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. If he ran right now, he would win. If the elections were held right now, he would win. He would win because green is in, and Al Gore is the poster-boy for green. I know others have said this, but it frightens me. It frightens me, because he's become a one trick pony. He's got a cause, and he's educated a lot of people - conservatives and liberals alike. What would putting him in office accomplish?

I have no idea who I would vote for, given the current candidates, but I sure wish we could hurry up and pick someone, because I'm awfully tired of seeing headlines about who is endorsing whom when we're still months away from anything even remotely decisive.