I am not actually trying to pick on Mitt Romney here.

But this story about his bizarre dog-on-the-roof incident is hilarious precisely because it goes so far out of its way not to be funny. Take, for instance, this graf:

Romney placed his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, into a kennel lashed to the top of his station wagon for a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983. Despite being shielded by a wind screen the former Massachusetts governor erected, Seamus expressed his discomfort with a diarrhea attack.

It's hysterical because it tries to talk about something that would normally be funny as if it were not. The description of the poor dog "express[ing] his discomfort with a diarrhea attack" from the roof of the car, and in apparent dismissal of the future governor's ad hoc windscreen, tries to make something ridiculous and bizarre sound like something completely commonplace, even though both the readers and the writer of the article know it is not. I mean, when I was a kid, we had a dog who pooped on the floor of the vet's office whenever she had to go to the vet's, but she wasn't doing it from the roof of the car.

I'm just sayin', is all, here.

Mighty Morphin' Mitt

This video is just plain weird. Enjoy!

They keep getting younger and younger

Inspired by Alan Sepinwall's Freaks and Geeks retro-blogging, we watched the first few episodes of that brilliant-but-canceled series this weekend. Which led me to note the curious way in which the cast members seem to get younger and younger every time I watch the show. How is that possible?

Wheel of presidents, turn turn turn...

Rumor now has it that the president on the next season of 24 may be a woman. Since the most recent season ended with Powers Boothe as Acting President after Wayne Palmer's stroke, this would presumably mean advancing the show's timeline another 4 years. Which makes me wonder if anyone connected to the show has ever heard of math.

Look at it this way: The first season took place before the election that made David Palmer president. The third season took place in fall of the next election year, a little more than four years later; John Keeler blackmailed Palmer into withdrawing from the race and was president in the fourth season. The sixth season took place three months into Wayne Palmer's term -- nearly five years after the election in season three. That's nine years since the first season; adding another presidential term puts us at thirteen years.

Now think about Jack Bauer. He had a sixteen year-old daughter in the first season. That makes Jack himself somewhere around 40 in the first season, and pushing fifty in the most recent season. Adding another term onto that gives you a Jack Bauer who's well into his fifties. There's nothing inherently wrong with an older action hero, of course, but it starts to push the bounds of believability and does a number on a lot of the inter-character dynamics of the show when Bauer's nearly a contemporary of folks like Bill Buchanan.

That said, the show could just make the new president someone appointed by Powers Boothe after Wayne Palmer's off-screen death, and have Boothe himself similarly dead. But if that's the case, I'd love to get a peek at an issue or three of Presidential Studies Quarterly from the 24 universe...

That's gotta be pretty darn unprecendented.

Congratulations to Mike Bloomberg for leaving the Republican party. One thing I did not know until this week's press coverage is that Bloomberg performed Rudy Giuliani's wedding to wife #3, Judith Nathan. Wouldn't that make for an odd debate if Rudy's the Republican nominee and Bloomberg runs as an independent? I know that if I ever run for president, I won't be expecting to debate Father Pilarz.

As long as I'm talking about Rudy's marital history, I think that if anyone brings up his first marriage to a second cousin, he should say that a first marriage to a second cousin is better than a second marriage to a first cousin.

Happy Flag Day!

One more open letter

Dear everyone who read my ID badge, did a double-take, and asked me how my name was pronounced last Monday,

No, I'm not related to Paulie Walnuts. His name is spelled and pronounced differently. Also, he's NOT REAL.

Chase, you magnificent bastard!

I watched your finale!

UPDATE: The finale seems to have made the Internet explode for the first time this year (the first two being the finales of Battlestar Galactica and Lost). I direct those who are complaining about the way The Sopranos ended to this line from Matt Stoller Seitz's spoiler-laden write-up (so don't click the link if you haven't seen the episode):

Keith Uhlich, my managing editor, called, and even though I tried to cut him off instantly, he still managed to squeeze out, "I think David Chase just pissed off millions of people."

If so, they were millions of people who weren't watching The Sopranos, but another show that they hoped would turn into what they wanted The Sopranos to be.

Open letters inspired by a week of grading AP exams

Dear student who took the question about the War Powers Act as an opportunity to complain about evolution, secular humanism, Nancy Pelosi, and gay people:

You did not get a poor score on this question because of your political beliefs. You got a poor score on this question because you didn't answer the question. At all.

~

Dear student who took the question about the War Powers Act as an opportunity to complain about George W. Bush, Mumia, the military-industrial complex, Fox News, and John Bolton's moustache:

You did not get a poor score on this question because of your political beliefs. You got a poor score on this question because you didn't answer the question. At all.

~

Dear person who stood behind me in line for lunch on Tuesday:

Thank you for taking the time not just to bump into me every five seconds that I stood in front of you, but for taking the time to invent new ways of bumping into me. Most people would not show the person they're annoying that level of personal attention.

~

Dear Tom Jones,

I think I showed remarkable restraint in not working lyrics from that other Tom Jones' body of work into conversation until we'd worked together for five days.

~

Dear student who answered Question 2 in Latin, Question 3 in Spanish, and Question 4 in cartoon form:

I appreciated your explanatory note that you didn't care about this exam because "Berkeley doesn't care how you do" and that your school still made you take the test. However, a number of points must be made: First, your cartoon incorrectly depicted West Virginia as siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Second, while my Latin is rusty at best, I am fairly certain that you mistranslated "United States." Third, one of the readers at my table is a California high school teacher and told me that enough good AP scores could allow an incoming student to arrive on campus as the equivalent of a second-semester sophomore. Annual tuition, fees, and housing at UC Berkeley total $20,777 for in-state residents and $39,461 for non-residents. So, clearly, someone there cares at least a little bit.

~

Dear Burger King manager and friend who were making some sort of extremely complicated transaction involving a small TV set, lots of small bills, and a truck in the parking lot, all across the counter while I stood waiting to place my order:

I saw nothing.

~

Dear residents of Daytona Beach and assorted visitors:

Put a shirt on. Please.

~

Dear Daytona County Convention Center,

You are the Battlestar Galactica of convention centers. The ship, not the show.

~

Dear Daytona Beach Hilton,

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I took such glee in abusing your policy of replacing any and all toiletries that have been opened, moved, or touched with brand-new ones while leaving the originals there. The pile of hotel toiletries I must now fit into the medicine chest in the bathroom looks cheap and tawdry.

Also, three computers in a sixteen-floor hotel do not really constitute a business center.

~

Dear Conrad Hilton,

I hope you don't get the news up there in whatever afterlife you've found yourself in.

They give out awards for this, right?

It takes a particular bureaucratic genius to schedule 12 hours of downtime on a university website the day after electronic notifications that tuition statements are available online are sent out.