REASON #3,428 THAT Alec Baldwin is the single finest celebrity on the face of the planet: He recently went on '60 Minutes' and described Kim Basinger's lawyer, Judy Bogen, as "a 300 pound homunculus with a face like a clinched fist". He then immediately recanted, saying that description was "too kind".

Who says 'homunculous' on prime-time television? Alec Baldwin, that's who!

ONCE UPON A time, there lived a young green troll. He made his home under a stone bridge which he had caulked carefully in order to make it draft-proof. In the autumn he collected provisions for the coming winter- sheep's eyeballs, goat ears, cow intestines and the like- and secreted them away in the well-organized pantry he had carefully carved into an abutment of the bridge. He liked nothing better than to claw his way to the top of the bridge during a winter snowstorm and hunch down on the balustrade, snow blowing in his eyes, and crack open a decayed pigeon from his stores for teatime.

Leonard- for that was his name- loved the quiet peace of these times. That wasn't to say he didn't enjoy leaping out at a hapless traveler, claws akimbo and fangs bared, to feast on their skin, but all that joggling around sometimes upset his stomach. He had always had a delicate constitution. His mother had warned him time and again to avoid too much physical activity during and after meals.

One particular Tuesday morning, Leonard woke up to a blinding snowstorm. He watched the swirling whiteness from his bedroom girder for a while, then yawned and swung down onto his wide living room truss. The little troll lit a fire in the grate, scratched his bottom with one claw and, yawning, put the kettle on. He rummaged for a moment in his live mouse box, picked out a plump wriggling specimen, and impaled it neatly on a sharp skewer. The mouse twitched a moment longer, then went still. Leonard turned to place his breakfast mouse in the glowing embers of the fire, but as he did so caught the faintest glimpse of grey beyond the sheeting curtain of white.

Leonard stared.

Nothing. The white snow puffed and played around the bridge. He shook his head, jowls jiggling a bit and drips of slime falling to the floor, and placed the mouse in the fire. He mounded the embers carefully over the skewer, turning once or twice to look over his shoulder. The silent snowstorm looked back.

The whistling kettle startled Leonard out of his reverie.

THIS IS TOO good to be true. This is so good, it must be fattening. It's so good, you're going to puke on yourself.

Barbara Walters had an affair with a U.S. Senator.

Barbara Walters! U.S. Senator!! Ahh, I'm in heaven!!

From now on, Babs' new nickname is 'Jack Donaghy'. For those of you who are foolish/busy enough not to watch '30 Rock', Jack is the fictional uber-conservative head of NBC who dallies in an illicit relationship with an uber-liberal Democratic senator from Illinois.

Democrat journalist Barbara Walters was screwing around with a married, Republican, black senator from Massachusetts!!!! Are you dying? I'm dying!!! He's not even dead, or anything like it. He's divorced and remarried and living in obscurity somewhere in Boca. Or rather... WAS living in obscurity in until Jack's book came out yesterday! Welcome back to the spotlight, Edward Brooke!

You know what they say... once you go Republican, you never go back.

Or something like that!

THIS MORNING, JASON asked that I write about Barack Obama and the Wright Controversy (sounds like the title of a children's story, doesn't it? 'Barack Obama and the Land of the Teddy Bears'). I was deeply flattered that he would want my point of view, until I realized that in reality he simply doesn't have the patience to read CNN.com and wanted the Cliffs Notes version of the controversy. When I said this, he enthusiastically agreed that this was indeed the case.

Bastard.

But I'm a sucker for guys who runs on the treadmill in boxer shorts, so to keep the peace, encourage him to keep doing that, and hopefully secure a free dinner, here's the haps:

Wright was Barack-o's church pastor for many years. Wright was a bit of a father figure to Barack since B's own dad was pretty much out of the picture. Wright was Barack's pastor up until about a year ago when B.O. went heavy on the campaign trail. Lately, the Wright Reverend's sermons got on YouTube. He said some things that could be either him being (1) a shoot-from-the-hip straight-talker or (2) totally racist (just as an aside, that makes him the black identical twin of Donald Rumsfeld). Among his possible assertions were that the U.S. brought the Twin Towers attacks upon themselves and that Hilary Clinton had an advantage in the election because she's white.

I know, I know. That's just crazy talk!!

Unfortunately, he then went to the National Press Club this past week and said those things all over again, then suggested- among other things- that the government had manufactured and released AIDS as a way to control and kill the black population, and that the US government is a terrorist organization. Oh, and by the by, he's still a super-duper good friend of Barack and B.O. listens to everything he says; the two of them are like twinned souls.

Because it's really, really easy to scare the crackers by saying that stupidity, brutality, and utter lack of political skill are inherent in black people and that Barack personally will rape your wife while stealing your silver if elected, Republicans are taking that ball and running with it as fast and far and hard as they can. Vote for Johnny Mac, because otherwise THEY'll be in your home, up to their elbows in government-grade AIDS!

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to suspect that the government manufactured and released Reverend Wright as a way to control and kill the black candidate. Poor Barack.

WHERE'S THE SUBTLETY? Where's the originality? Where, in short, is the beef? It saddens me deeply to tell you that for reasons best left to television executives, HRH Britney Spears shall be returning to 'How I Met Your Mother'. This, of course, is because she appeared on the program earlier and gave them a big ratings boost. Everyone watched.

Of course they watched! They wanted to see if she'd shave her head or birth a baby right in the middle of the taping, or stand up and let her paunch dribble out of the sides of her pleather lace-up mini. And now it has been declared that she will return, since clearly what people want to see is more Britney Spears. If I were an exec, I might question whether people actually like the poor girl or whether they're just waiting to see what heinous breech of common decency she perpetrates next. I mean, that's why I'm watching! If she returns and again does nothing Louisianan, well- what's the point? They'll piss off the regular fans in exchange for thirty minutes of slightly higher ratings which will drop back to nothing when Brit-Brit (1) crawls back under the rock from whence she came, or (2) fails to deliver the crazy. Poor Doogie Howser. He's the Cassandra of his generation.

No, if you want originality you'll have to turn to the headlines, where you'll find that charming Austrian gentleman who imprisoned his daughter in the basement of his house for twenty-odd years and forced her to have his children (seven in all).

!!!!!

?!?!?!?!?

!!!! ??? !!!!

The part that really rocks you back on your heels is the information that he was in fact married to someone and had children with her... and that they all lived in the house!

?!?!??!

"Excuse me, Klaus, but you're standing in the way of the basement."
"I, um... You don't need to go down there."
"Yes, Klaus, I need some pickles. Move it."
"You can't. I... uh... I just farted down there. Sorry. I'll go get your pickles."

How does one keep that up for twenty years? Additionally, why do German-speakers turn out to be so insane? Is it the language? The weather? The genes?

At least you know you can trust Governor Shwarzenegger. Sure, he uses his basement to re-animate skeletons with the help of an Igor and some lightening bolts, but at least he's kind enough about it to take them into the daylight and call them his wife.

IT'S THE BIG day! You're excited, I'm excited- hey, who isn't getting their panties in a bunch today? Oh, you know what I'm talking about: watching the results of the Pennsylvania democratic primaries roll in! Can you stand it?!

The deal, or so I understand it, is that Hilary either wins this one or walks away a loser. Even if she wins, she has to win by more than fifty delegate votes just to stay in the game in a real way; tough, when she's polling lower every day. I was a Hilary fan before I was an Obama fan. I hate to see her like this. At the same time, Obama just seems... well, like he could win. That means a lot to me right about now.

I'm not in any way dismissing the Ron Paul enthusiasts. In fact, bless their little cotton socks. I like his spray-painted signs and presidential hair. I like libertarians. In general, they tend to be sexier than most people. But I don't see Ron Paul walking away with this one, I really don't. John McCain is not clever and a Republican (redundant). Hilary is unlikeable. Obama rhymes with Osama. Everyone's got their problems.

I ride my bike to work (and everywhere else, since my car battery died at work and my Honda is now gracefully reposing there in ghetto splendor), open the windows instead of using heat and air, and try to grow my own food in a small, one-zucchini-a-week kind of way. I don't care about gas prices and have given it up as a bad job. This is my professional opinion as a geologist/economist, you understand, not just navel-gazing; total oil supply slowly going down, demand remaining high or rising, prices will simply go up (along with profits, since it's not that much more expensive to get it out of the ground) until there's no more oil, which I give ten to twenty years. I'd draw you a graph, but... yeah. You don't care.

At any rate, I'd like to see gay people living in as much official misery every other married couple. I don't want 16-year-old girls to go to back alley coat hanger services because they can't get legal abortions. I'd like someone to, oh- I don't know- raise funding for schools. Maybe teach a little sex ed so that the question of coat hangers can be avoided entirely. Good bike paths. Health care for all kids. And that's it.

And even though I said I wouldn't, too bad:

WHEN YOU REGISTER to vote, there's a little box at the bottom of the page that says 'Sign or Make Your Mark Here'. Sign... or make your mark. Now, my first thought was that this is for people like Opie down in Packing & Shipping; Opie who can't be trusted to hold a safety pencil the right way up without nibbling on it, and who needs someone else to guide his hand for his caveman-like, scrawled 'X' (or possibly straggling squiggle). I can just hear Opie's high-pitched squeal of delight as the pencil makes a mark down the page. Pleased, he does it again and again until a new form must be retrieved to replace Opie's enthusiastic damage.

And then Opie gets to go vote.

It was a very depressing thought. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' pretty much has to be for the feral among us; even worse, the voting feral. But then I remembered Prince (The Artist Formerly Known As). If Prince is foolish enough to change his name to an unpronounceable glyph, surely many other Americans must be as well. It made me feel immediately better. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' is for people with symbol names, not Opie!

Not Opie.

To register to vote, or just to sign or make your own mark, go to Rock the Vote and fill in forms old school.