niwandajones | FoxTrot is too damned funny for an actual newspaper...

In other news, a weekend of varied frustrations was utterly redeemed when I managed to somehow be first on the hold list at my local library for their single copy of the latest Dark Tower book, Wolves of the Calla. So, I'm in a pleased place at the moment, despite the rather fluid nature of my employment.*

From the New York Times:

Clark Advance Bars Not on His Diet

Wherever Gen. Wesley K. Clark goes, his advance team likes to hand out Clark bars. It's an easy appeal to chocolate lovers, with a little name-reinforcement thrown in.

But it turns out that the candidate does not really like Clark bars. He is a Butterfinger man. More than that, he is a Cheetos freak. The man loves Cheetos so much that his aides wonder why he has not turned orange.

And yet even with all his Cheeto-binging, he appears to be in excellent shape. A competitive swimmer since high school, Mr. Clark, 58, swims almost every day. He starts with a 400-yard warm-up, then swims 2,000 yards in a little more than half an hour. He says he gets his pulse rate up to 180 beats per minute. His staff says he has 5 percent body fat.

Emphasis mine. Call me a freak, but this is the kinda crazy-ass stuff that makes me feel good about a candidate. I want -- nay, need -- more info about his positions before I jump in with both feet... but this is the kinda fluff that can make me actually like a candidate, rather than simply voting for him.

The fact that he used to market electric bicycles to law enforcement and military agencies, and believes that FTL travel is humanity's destiny doesn't hurt, either. ;-)

* No, I don't seem to be in any danger of losing my job with Kaplan; quite the contrary, my student evals are just getting better. But my work with them until the end of the year is mainly one-on-one tutoring, which means that my actual work schedule can (and does) change on a moment's notice. Add in the fact that I was assigned almost all this tutoring over the course of a single 48-hour period, after a week of wondering whether I'd have any work at all from Kaplan over the next two months... and you understand what I mean by, "fluid".