Yeah, I know, it's odd that almost all stories on the site come after I've been sick or really exhausted for a few days. Dunno what to make of that. This one talks about Oklahoma Democratic "rising star" Brad Carson, who is not a DINO but doesn't mind if you think he is. I'm not gonna call the guy the lesser of two "evils," but the best i can say about him is that he's the least disastrous candidate in the race. Read the story to find out why.

Update: Carson does have a progressive primary opponent, a minister-lawyer named Monte Johnson, and he's looking pretty good. A friend actually called on the phone to make sure I knew Carson had a primary opponent, which I had forgotten but remembered as soon as I heard the name. I doubt Johnson can win the primary or the general election, but it won't be because he doesn't match Oklahoma's values.

I also learned that a "wedding shower" is like a bridal shower, but the groom is present, too. I learned two things in one phone call, cool.

I'm still exhausted.

Oh, you want more.

I'm told that the chair I require to be able to work without hurting my back will be repaired on Monday, and that it might have been repaired today, but it was not, so it will definitely be on Monday. In the interim, I had to make a run into a neighboring town to purchase an alternate chair, which is marginally acceptable. It hurts my back, but not as much as the other alternatives I have. I can sit in it for 30-45 minutes at a time.

I'm now using Word 2004, and I swear to God this program has some kind of timer in it that changes my font to Times New Roman several times per second. I'm typing in a well-defined paragraph style, I make absolutely no style changes, and yet when I glance over to the formatting palette the font has changed from Minion Pro to Times New Roman, and no amount of reapplying the real paragraph style changes it back. This program is obsessed with Times New Roman, and it's making me dotty.

I'm beginning to understand why Matt Neuberg seemed to approach upgrading to Office 2004 not as a software installation, but as a natural disaster that had to be endured until everything was back to normal.

From Salon's coverage of Friday's debate between Howard Dean and Ralph Nader, concerning when Dean asked Nader:

to return the money his campaign had received from Richard Egan, a Bush fundraiser from Massachusetts who served as Bush's ambassador to Ireland.

"I wasn't aware he was a corporate criminal," Nader said in defense of Egan. "He's an American citizen. He might be a Republican, but he just happens to believe in civil liberties, maybe. I don't even know the man. But Republicans are human beings, too." At this, Nader's supporters applauded vigorously, a moment that crystallized how unmoored from principle the consumer advocate's movement has become.

Why exactly does Salon think that a "mooring principle" of Nader's ill-advised run is that "Republicans are not human beings?"