Omnibus Prediction Market Prognosticator Election Edition.

Pachinko: like a heartbeat baby trying to wake up.

Like any thinking American person, my attention has been ricocheting like the steel balls in a pachinko machine on speed on crack, over the last few weeks. Also, like a roller coaster that's like the steel balls in a pachinko machine on speed on crack. Also: like a rocketship to Mars on a roller coaster that's like the steel balls in a pachinko machine on speed on crack. Ricocheting, is what I'm saying. Highs, lows. Exacerbated by speedy substances. Noise and signal.

Like you, dear reader, I'll be glad to have it all over. Unless it doesn't turn out the way I want it to, of course.

The roller coaster of my electoral attentions.

After all my reading/ricocheting, it seems to me that I'm in as good a position as anyone to declare my predictions and prognostications.

Speed, bien sur.

1. Utah will go...Republican. That seems likely.

2. Gerrymandering is the sport of choice among Utah legislators, and they don't even need a license.

3. Given #2, I predict that Utah will have four Republican congresspeople, and certain people that I have, in the past, called "demagogue" in the newspaper will no longer be the demagogue-iest of them all, and that's the truth. It can always get worse (is my basic political philosophy).

4. Orrin Hatch will retain his stentorian grasp on the Senate seat. Until his very last breath.

Not that I'm bitter.

The Presidential race? Please. I am not going to jinx that with some wild-eyed, crack-fueled, poll-reading, Nate-Silver-Sam-Wang-loving bender. I am just crossing my fingers, like all the other thinking, praying, chicken-bone-polishing, icon-kissing patriots.

to the moon! or Mars!

See you tomorrow. Vote, will ya? Like a rocketship to Mars?

Oscar preparation.

Necessary reading: Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue. Lots of pictures, although I am now hating the new concept that seems to govern the photo shoots, which is to place contemporary movie stars in sets from old movies--this year, everyone's placed in classic Hitchcock scenarios. Fine, very clever. Whatever.

However, and more importantly, I found a more interesting item, the "Vanities Dare," which for this month is the Primary Polling-Place Dare. For instance:

• for one point, you can "complain that something is wrong with your ballot because Oprah's not on it."
  
• for three points, you could "construct crude cardboard effigies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Then from inside the voting booth, enact a Punch-and-Judy-style puppet show for those behind you in line, in which the 'candidates' poke through the curtains and beat each other with swizzle sticks." And,
  
• for five points, you could "take a closed container of dry ice into the voting booth, open it while inside, vote, and then emerge in a dramatic fog while loudly proclaiming, 'Yeah, I voted for the witch, bitch! Mwah-hah-hah-hah-ha-haah!'" Or, also for five points,
• you could "greet all gathered ballot holders with the phrase 'God bless you!' and earnestly, insistently ask them if they'll be voting for Mike Huckabee. Should anyone irritatedly ask you if you've ever had a civics lesson, explain that you were home-schooled."

Not that I could, or would, do any of those things. Ever. Also, even if I were so inclined, it's too late for me, since I have already, quietly and without fanfare, cast my primary ballot, saying nothing to anyone. The excess cleverness ship has sailed.