Okay, so I admit that I didn\’t watch the entire Democratic and Republican debates on Saturday night, although I did catch little bits. Thus, I have nothing really to say about any of the actual content discussed.

But I do have to mention one of my pet peeves about the whole process. Some people are bothered about how Iowa and New Hampshire have so much influence in picking our new President. Others complain about the length and banality of the whole charade.

I, on the other hand, have found something else that is ruining the whole political theater for me. Specifically, I can\’t stand how much John Edwards blinks. You\’ll thank me for pointing this out. Watch this video from a previous debate:

Honest to God – it looks like his head is trying to fly off the rest of his body with the way those lids are flapping. And once you notice it, you can\’t notice anything else – what he\’s saying becomes completely irrelevant. (Okay, slightly less irrelevant than it already is.)

Nobody on the GOP side is quite that bad, although I noticed Mike Huckabee is quite the blinker. Fred Thompson doesn\’t really have to worry, since his eyelids are closed during most of the debates.

Apparently, one of the signs that someone is lying is that they blink more. I\’m not saying Edwards necessarily lies any more than any of the other candidates. In fact, maybe he\’s just trying to generate a breeze to keep himself cool on stage. But any time he wants to come over and play poker with his trial lawyer pals, he\’s more than welcome.

Even though most of my historical knowledge comes from multiple viewings of Bill and Ted\’s Excellent Adventure, I appreciate the fact that Wisconsin has a state agency dedicated to writing down the important stuff. That state agency, of course, is the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Last month, I posted a few crackpot letters received by Wisconsin state legislative offices. People seemed to enjoy seeing the type of thing their legislators are asked to respond to, so I thought I\’d kick off this year with a classic e-mail from November 14th of 2005:

Dear Senator:

I am a deaf person who was ferociously molested on the job and off by a network controlled by Oliver Stone who printed my name in Cineaste Film Quarterly. They tortured me and they brutally raped my retarded deaf girlfriend after letters in evidence of John Lennon\’s murder were found to have been planted on my house by a 12 year old Jewish girl who wrote to me when I was tortured as a child. Stone and his network have made me into a human sacrifice and treated me for years with the utmost hatred and with acts of beastiality, morally depradating and criminally disturbed in nature.

In 1982, I wrote a letter to Leslie Katz which was used to justify torturing me and to rape my deaf girlfriend. The persons responsible are Reagan, Clinton and Peter Gabriel. They were practicing sorcery of a sort to mollify Yoko Ono who maliciously blames me for the death of John Lennon.

They had an agent placed named Evangelia Karmas, from Hidden Pun Studios which gives you a clear indication of how their minds operate. Neither me, nor deaf Jeannie, had any role at all in Lennon\’s murder. They are just molesting me to cover their own atrocity after working with Lennon\’s killers in framing me as an offender to make a grab on the storyline. I was a part time, deaf library clerk who they attacked on the job, after I reported being tortured as a child.

Please help us. Jeannie was raped and I have been tortured by these murderers. They clearly believe that their celebrity is made for impunity and override of fair play.

Come to think of it, that actually makes perfect sense when compared to some of the posts on the Democratic Underground. In fact, I think this letter is the inspiration for about 67% of Dennis Kucinich\’s presidential platform.

I love the members of the triumvirate – Reagan, Clinton (Chelsea?) and Peter Gabriel. Like Reagan and Clinton are sitting around thinking of who could be the third person to fill out the Axis of Evil, and Reagan turns to Clinton and says \”Hey, Peter Gabriel\’s not in Genesis anymore, right? He probably has some free time.\” Those must have been the days that Reagan and Clinton smoked a lot of pot together.

In fact, I\’m pretty sure this was one of Clinton\’s first executive initiatives. After his election, he probably gathered his cabinet together and said \”Okay, we\’re going to get to universal health care and welfare reform and all that stuff – but first, find this guy and frame him for the death of John Lennon that happened 12 years ago. Then molest him.\”

I would bet Hillary\’s not getting this dude\’s vote.

Finally, I love the fact that he blames the planting of evidence on a 12 year-old Jewish girl. He had to work that in. This illustrates one of my theories: That while not all people that hate Jews are necessarily \”crazy\” (just bigoted), all people who are crazy hate Jews. You never hear a legitimate crazy person sing the praises of Judaism – they\’re all invested in some crazy Zionist plot against them. (See: Barrett, Kevin.)

Certainly, reasonable cases can be made both for and against the War in Iraq. But chances are, you haven\’t heard the anti-war case made as convincingly as Kids Incorporated did in their cover of Culture Club\’s \”The War Song:\”

By the time you watch that, I will have deliberately sprayed oven cleaner directly into my eyes to avoid having to see it again.

Incidentally, taking a position of equal depth and contemplation might just be enough to get you the Democratic presidential nomination.

Special thanks to my friend Brian, who held a fantastic (and ear-splitting) New Year\’s party. I got to catch up with a lot of friends, although there are certain people who, for whatever reason, I couldn\’t talk to as much as I wanted.

The funniest part of parties now is the people that come up to me and beg me not to blog about something drunken they are likely to do. I probably had five people ask me not to write about them. So rest assured, people – you\’re probably safe. Probably.

Also, Guitar Hero III made an appearance at the party, and seemed pretty popular. I played a couple songs, but then quickly realized that being proficient in a video game with a toy guitar is A) actually embarrassing, and B) means you\’re sober. So I quit.

And, as always, the meatballs were great.