You do run on and on about the obvious.

Running out of on and on would be fatal for a journal. Without the obvious nothing would get done. Or something like that. Hard to say this early in the morning.

The morning is overcast, home now from breakfast, the world (from reading the paper) is in tatters. A regular old Saturday morning, in other words, with nothing planned other than to watch my painfully dumber than ever Japanese soaps later this evening. This I find not altogether terrible. Ms. Emmy, with three different kinds of cat food sitting on the kitchen floor, each in its own little dish, has found one of them palatable so she's in the bedroom sleeping. Otherwise she'd be standing up on my lap, both of her front paws on my chest, looking closely, examining my eyes and voicing her distress at the lack of quality care in this slipshod bachelor household.

OK, more important stuff. The candidate's ten favorite songs as reported to Blender (a web site I'd never heard of before):

I guess three questions: How many of these do I recognize? Which ones were picked for “political” rather than “personal” purposes? How might they align with my own choices?

Well, of course, McCain is older, but not all that much older than I am, so his exposure to music, particularly during his salad days, would be similar to mine. Obama, being significantly younger, would have had a different experience and would probably have favorites I've never heard of.

We won't get into the fact Obama is a root, toot and shoot Muslim, born on a foreign continent and raised, once he'd gotten out of the terrorist training camps of his youth, on an exotic island in the Pacific known for its non-American Asian influences and picturesque sunsets. A background you'd naturally expect would cause me to favor his selections even before I'd seen them. I'd certainly avoid any tendency to award him points for considerations other than his music, of course. Wouldn't allow any of these factors to influence my evaluation of his choice of favorite songs. Not here. Not now. Not before the election.

OK, back to the music. Which of the artists do I not recognize? The Fugees, Kanye West and will.i.am, all of them Obama's. Hip Hop. OK, I pretty much bailed after Punk, but you'd expect that of someone my age. Of these three songs by artists I didn't recognize, when I listened to them, had I heard them before but not noted the artist? None, I admit.

Now the others: which might I at least consider for my own personal list? I have to admit I would consider The Platters (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes), The Beach Boys (Good Vibrations) and Roy Orbison (Blue Bayou) as well as give points for The Stones, Marvin Gaye, Bruce Springstein and Aretha Franklin. I started with rock and roll in the fifties and got pretty heavily into the Beatles - Stones - Dylan Psychedelic Age in the late sixties and early seventies. I like ABBA's Dancing Queen well enough, but I wonder if McCain knows it's been played full volume at every gay outdoor San Francisco festival and event held since its release? Could he have been sly enough to slip it into his list to cater to the gay vote? All three of the registered gay Republicans in the entire nation?

And, of course, you have to suspect McCain's inclusion of Merle Haggard's “If We Make it Through December” is politically motivated. “Sweet Caroline” perhaps more personal, the expression of an unhealthy longing for a bedroom merger with Caroline Kennedy. Good luck with that, Mr. Not-To-Be-Elected (dear god) President!

You've managed to offend everyone. For some reason I understand how it may have evolved, knowing you're too old now to develop the obvious areas of discretion most find necessary for survival, but don't you think it better to trash this and start over?

It's too late now.