I woke up at 11:45 to the sound of Hilliard’s tornado siren - something that’s always annoying, but greatly preferred over the potential alternative of waking up to a tornado showering you in broken class and neighborhood refuse. I started to turn on the radio, then thought maybe that was a terrible idea since my bedroom is on the second floor. I unplugged the radio instead, and hurried downstairs to grab my wallet, phone, and keys.

Halfway down the basement steps the siren was ending its cycle but the thunder and lightning would have none of that quitter’s attitude. Fortunately my flashlight was sitting out in the living room from yesterday’s surround sound wiring adventures, and I found room for that in my hands, all the while expecting tree limbs and cattle to come bursting in from all sides. “Why would you turn around for the flashlight?!”, the audience moans. Good thing I don’t live in a big-budget action film.

Short story shorter, there was a sound in the basement I did not ever want to hear: dripping. One of the entry points for what looks like a Brinks wire is also an entry point for water. Doggone it. In the basement CD101 will only come in audibly if I hold the radio, which I realize is probably unacceptable as I’m standing there in a horrendous thunderstorm holding a wired electronic device next to my face. Now that I’m about to go back to bed I can see that the leak downstairs is a result of the north side of the house getting freakin’ steamrolled with rain. This is no consolation.

Man. I thought the worst of the storm was past here 20 minutes ago, but the foundation-rattling thunder just keeps keepin’ on. So much for a good night’s sleep. Is that hail? Delightful.

Lately I’ve been busy being “grown up” - and the oddest thing is how natural it all seems until I stop and think about it. Coffing’s jet-setting about the cosmopolitan city of St. Louis at an athletic training conference. One of the guys just bought his first new car. One of my sisters is gettin’ hitched. And, the Saturday before last I moved out of the apartment and into a house.

So, if you rely on me as your fount of nerdiness and have grown parched of late as I’ve run off in other directions, a thousand apologies. Somehow I managed to miss for an entire week the announced pricing for the 2009 Dodge Challenger. See, I read somewhere that they would start “under $30,000,” and I knew a 6-cylinder model was part of the mix. This had me assuming that, instead of buying one next fall about fifteen seconds after I pay off the Mazda, I would have to mope about the fact that any Challenger with three pedals and a HEMI was stupidly expensive. From the press release:

The U.S. MSRP for the all-new 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T is $29,995. Featuring the new-generation 5.7-liter HEMI V-8 engine, the Dodge Challenger R/T produces an estimated 370 horsepower (276 kW) and 398 lb.-ft. (540 N•m) of torque when paired with the standard five-speed automatic transmission.

Pricey? Yes, but not as horrible as I expected. Purty? Yes again. Sadly, manual transmission isn’t an option for the $22,000 base model, and it sounds like you’ll have to cough up another $995 for stick-shift on the R/T. Miserable. I’ve always wanted to drive a noisy, beautiful American muscle car before we burn up all our gas or the EPA forbids anything bigger than a golf cart. Don’t make me buy a BMW 128i in 2009, Dodge! Let’s see some financing promotions and racing stripes on the Challenger R/T, or I’ll do it!!

Marc Dann’s a bigger slimeball than we realized - shocker.

Ohio’s current Attorney General was one of the loudest voices in 2006 when it was time for Change, and A New Direction, and all the same old bunk. Taft and many of his fellow elected Republicans gave him an easy case to make. But, in well under two years Dann’s proven better than the state GOP ever could that neither party’s leaders are brimming with competence.

The Democrat, who promised to end the “culture of corruption” in state government during his 2006 campaign, essentially acknowledged he wasn’t qualified for the office. But after “on-the-job training” he now wants Ohioans to give him a second chance.

Dann said he took “full responsibility” for the actions of his underlings.

“Full responsibility,” meaning the sort where his underlings lose their jobs, not the type were he’s going to sacrifice his own. Let’s not be rash.

The situation is annoying, because what difference will it make in the 2008 elections here? None. The Republican party will rail on about hypocrisy with the same self-righteous bluster of the Democrats in 2006, but without accompaniment from most metro areas’ papers and TV stations. Offenses and mistakes that are signs of deep, dark corruption in (R) politicians are lamentable distractions when there’s a (D) next to your name.

It’s fun at least for addicts of Ohio politics and tabloid news: Our very own Eliot Spitzer scandal, appropriately scaled back and boring.

[Update 05-21-2008: Mispelled "hypocrisy" a couple paragraphs up. Tsk-tsk.]

The back-and-forth, quoting out of context, and general cattiness of politics gets pretty tiresome, especially during an election season. For the most part it’s better to ignore it. Sometimes, though, a candidate says something too ridiculous to let slide:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. …

“And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not,” he said.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” he also said.

If you read the CNN story that I’m quoting here, it’s pretty clear that Obama’s response is more of the now-standard Barackish dissembling. Instead of simply apologizing for being careless, Obama has to blame the listener - “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” - and complain about how his opponents nit-pick his every word.

Well, Barack, maybe you should stop saying idiotic things. If it’s not elitist to say, effectively, that small town Midwesterners are unemployed racist yokels waiting for the federal government to repair their crappy communities, I don’t know what would be. The question is not whether people like me are turned off by what the personality candidate says and the extremist name-your-far-left-hero types he hangs out with. But what about some of the moderates who might have been convinced that Obama was, in fact, a leader as great as his speeches?

I received notice today from the IRS that I may be entitled to a payment of up to $600! Yaaaayy!!!

How, you ask, shall I spend this fortuitous government windfall? It’ll cover half the enormous sum of taxes I had to pay on savings bonds cashed in 2007. Yaaaayy(???)

It’s a shame, really. I’m ruining the lives of poor people by not buying something for which I’d have to pay sales tax. Or buying a certificate of deposit and paying taxes on the interest. Or investing in a stock that pays dividends, then paying taxes on the dividends, and then paying more taxes if I ever make a profit from selling the investment. I am what’s wrong with America.

“I sure do love suicide bombings. Oh, and young men. Mmmm, young men.”

I saw some tool on campus wearing a kaffiyeh today. Second time in as many weeks I’ve noticed a guy wearing the symbol of the two-faced Palestinian suicide cult — and I don’t leave my office all that often. I know full well that cataloging examples of clueless leftism on a large college campus would be an exhausting task, and it’s not one I plan to undertake. But come on, people. Israel is better than Palestine, and that is a demonstrable fact unless you love people whose claims to fame are losing a war 40 years ago and celebrating the murder of civilians.

Nice scarf, though. Idiots. Dead terrorist photo copyright Time.

If you were a comedian, Pakistan would be a troubling place. What kind of joke could you make up about a country that’s beyond parody? From the Associated Press story “Bombing Kills 35 at Pakistan Funeral“:

Iqbal, the deputy police chief of the Lakki Marwat district, and his driver were killed in a roadside bomb Friday morning. By the time his body was brought to his hometown of Mingora for the funeral, night had fallen.

“Because it was dark, the suicide bomber was able to mingle among the people easily,” said Shahbuddin, an assistant inspector of police who was at the funeral.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, protesters responded in… er… incendiary fashion:

© Reuters. Run from that fire, guys! Run so fast it’ll never catch you!

Part of Reuters’ caption for the above:

Activists from the Sunni Action Committee run for safety after they caught fire while burning an effigy during a protest in Karachi February 29, 2008. Protesters in Pakistan called on Friday for ties with Denmark to be severed over the republication of one of several cartoons…

While suicide bombers murder Pakistani civilians, Pakistani civilians burn effigies of Denmark — because Danish papers reprinted cartoons mocking Islamic terrorists. The audacity of those Danes!

Speaking of audacity, let’s consider for a second Barack Obama’s stated position on Pakistan (or as Obama would say it, Pah-kee-stahn). The Iraq war is a mistake, a distraction, and a failure of diplomacy, but boy - if there are terrorists in Pakistan, a President Barack would send in the guns. What would he do after that, when Islamist nutbags came pouring in from every direction, as they have in Iraq? Apologize for the inconvenience and begin work on a diplomatic resolution?