It’s been a few days since I’ve written a “real” post — ironic for me, since I’m usually heavy on the words and light on the photos. It’s like we’ve all shifted into that Parallelland that I wrote about a few days back. Ah, Paralelland.

So, in no particular order, here’s what’s on my mind:

I still don’t know who to vote for. Now that it’s become rather obvious that the Texas primary on March 4 will actually mean something, my deer-in-the-headlights approach to choosing a candidate seems like it’s a little less advisable, and yet … {stares at the pretty lights .. it’s so beautiful! … crash!}

I decided, on the recommendation of a friend who is having problems making up her mind like I am, to visit Glass Booth, a site that features one of those Cosmo-type quizzes where you rank the relative importance of a number of issues, choose your stance on them, and then it splits out a list of candidates that best match your political outlook.

I should clarify here that my specific problem is that I can’t pick between Obama and Hillary. I have a number of friends who have come out strongly for the Obamanator, while I, myself waffle back and forth (I think Obama has a better chance of winning the White House against MCain, but I think Hillary has a better shot at getting a second term).

This quiz, unfortunately, didn’t help much. According to Glass Booth, my best match as a dark horse candidate I’ve never heard of. I don’t think he’s on the ballot in Texas — I’m not even sure he’s still in the race. It also did little to solve my confusion: Obama is a 74% percent match, Hillary is 71%.

I was more than a little stunned to find out that Mike Huckabee is a better match for me, at least according to this survey, than Bill Richardson was. I would be willing to guess, however, that the issues on which I differ with Mike Huckabee (such as: whether or not I, as a homosexual man, should be allowed to continue to live; and whether or not the world is 6,000 years old) might all be deal breakers, whereas I suspect that my major differences with Bill will be more in the area of whether I am strongly or just mildly opposed to providing tax breaks to large corporations in exchange for moving large portions of their workforce out of the country.

By the way, in case you’re not local, Obama and Clinton are going to debate at my esteemed institution this Thursday. I was originally rather disappointed to find that the debate is going to be held on a day I’ll be out of town (in DC), but since then we’ve come to find out that no one from campus can actually go. The entire event — save for a paltry lottery of 100 tickets, issued only to students — is by invitation only.

They’re also holding it in one of the gyms because every single auditorium of size on campus is under renovation right now. Accordingly, the gym (fortunately, not the main one) will be closed down all week for the bomb sniffing dogs and athletic-odor-removal teams to come in and do their jobs.

The worst part about all of this is that someone at UT clearly provided sexual favors to someone else for this “honor.”

Then there’s this bizarre piece in the local news here in Austin: a 7 year old boy was found hanging by a hook in a bathroom in a charter school a couple of weeks back, and the local constabulary has ruled the incident an “accident.” (I should note that the boy died in the hospital a couple of days later without ever waking up.)

Yes, folks, that’s right! This young man, courageous and tired of living life, somehow managed to hang himself from a hook above head level in the bathroom, after which he was able to put the object he used to climb up there away safe and secure so that his fellow courageous comrades and Young Sons of the Motherland would not injure themselves upon entering the room. All hail President Scroob!

Seriously, does this not read like those death notices from Cold War era totalitarian states? “The dissident’s death was ruled a suicide after the state doctor performing the autopsy ruled that the four gunshot wounds sustained in the back of the head, fired from a distance of ten to twenty feet, were clearly self-inflicted.”

It do boggle the mind, don’t it?

Anyway. Thanks to all for the birthday wishes! It’s funny how turning 29 year after year after year just never gets old! It’s a quiet birthday so far, but it’s been a hectic weekend, and that’s kind of what I want.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!