The McCain campaign has completely fallen apart at this stage, with in-fighting rife, and journalists writing pieces about the disaster of poor strategy and bad organisation that it has been. This article is really excellent, and is must-read (if a nerd, like me).

And today's Holy-Christ moment is this: according to two recent polls, Arizona is possibly competitive, with McCain having only a 3-4% lead in his home state. I'm going to have a good time next Tuesday.

To finish, here's my favourite election story right now. A canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. She knocks, and a woman answers. The canvasser asks the woman who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, so she yells to her husband, "Honey, who are we voting for?". The husband yells back, "We're votin' for the nigger!" The woman then turns back to canvasser, and says, "We're voting for the nigger."

I am a monumentous dumbass.

We have received a car from Cath's parents, in a kind of hand-me-down fashion after Cath's grandfather's car was passed on to Cath's mum. We drove it from Cardiff on Monday. With both of Cath's parents watching,I reversed off the drive, but because of car's parked all around the exit, I could not see well. Thinking a small gap had emerged, I backed into the road cautiously, expecting cars would slow down as they approached and let me get out.

This happened for one of the flows of traffic. From the other direction, I hear a blast of a horn, and the sickening thunk of steel-on-steel, as another car passed by my left rear wing. Speaking to the (WOMAN) driver after, she said she thought I had stopped as I back out, and had opportunity to squeeze past. I, unfortunately, did not see her - from the angle I was backing out, she was in a bit of a blind spot, and moved a little further, causing the collision. The shock and the damage was reason enough for my stomach to turn, but with the people who had just given us the car watching, this was utterly mortifying.

I was taking it entirely on faith that I could back out at that time, but with no ability to see properly, I seemed like the only thing to do. I believe I was to blame for it - it was me who pulled the car out. However, I have no idea why the other car tried to drive on past, and the more I think about it, the less I can believe she was quite so reckless.

A quick summary. Length of car ownership period: 45 seconds. Damage incurred: £260.

Damn you, expensive parts and labour. DAMN YOU.

Thank you, Colin Powell, for making a point not articulated enough - that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but even if he is, why should anyone care? Possibly Democrats think they can't afford, at this time, to say this too much. That would be sad, if it were true.

It has been a sad few days. Just after 9.30am on Thursday 16 October 2008, William Harding (Will, Bill, Dad and Gramps) died, at the age of 89. I knew him for just under six of those years, since I met Cath.

On Thursday evening, all of Cath's family got together to share memories and draw comfort in each other - I feel very priviledged to be considered part of that family, and while I didn't have stories to tell myself, I listened as all described a man of great generosity, fierce intellect and wicked sense of humour.

In truth, I only really got to see glimpses of the last two, as the body and mind wore down with age. The first, however, will be my lasting impression of him - a person who strove, in all ways, to help and assist anyone who came into his life. I also saw in him charateristics that I have come to consider important parts of being a man. He was proud, and he was stoic to the point of stubborness, never wanting to inconvenience others on his account. I see these traits in Mike, his son, and I hope one day someone will see them in me.

Perhaps most importantly, he was (and always will be) a hero - someone who fought in the Second World War, risking his life and his future, because the alternative outcome could not be allowed to happen. This sacrifice, that I often feel I could never replicate, is one that should become a permanent part of our personal and national histories, and should never be forgotten.

William Harding, 1919 - 2008. You will be missed.

This is a really nice bit of satire, in response to some of the people who've been speaking out at McCain rallies. I love you, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

A link, especially for Tom, but also for anyone else that loves Stephen Fry. I love Stephen Fry. I often wish my first homosexual experience had been with him, but instead I had to settle for a girl.

Also, some jokes I thought of this weekend:

Race relations are changing. Look at America. Used to be if a black man was running for office, there would be people who wouldn't vote for him because he was a black man. Now when a black man runs for office, there are people who won't vote for him because he's an Arab.

I want to go hunting for zebras with a laser gun. I want to know if, when I shot one of them, it would tell me the price of zebras.

I have started a new blog, which I will be using to post about the professional wrestling. This is so if I want to write about that, people who don't care (my "friends") no longer have to read it.

Prizes for working out what the name of the site is all about, though.

Here's an admission that will surprise hardly anyone who knows me (and complete stranger that are just good at this game): I'm quite a nerd. For things that I'm interested in or that catch my attention, I love getting details, reading opinions, and storing up knowledge so that one day I could explain to someone else a chronology of events (score) or maybe even compile a list (double score).

So, I hear a new band, and I want to know all their albums, which ones are seminal, how their sound evolved and how they fit into a particular scene or genre. Sometimes I'll do all this without listening to much of their actual music. It's the same for wrestling and for comedy, and for the last 10 months, it has been the US presidential elections.

I get a lot of information from this site, run by Ashish, which aside from covering a wide range of issues and opinions, has been excellent at summarising and collating polling data, and explaining what matters. The way they have fluctuated has been one of the most interesting parts of this process. And the way polls look now, it is going to be a whitewash on election day.

I also stayed up last night to watch the VP debate. I thought Joe Biden was statesman-like, which is probably a codeword for dull. Which is fine - its hard to criticise someone for being competent and knowledgeable. I thought he pulled punches, as was predicted - given expectations, he would have appeared bullying and arrogant if he'd gone on the attack at her. Instead, he established Obama's positions and pushed the line about McCain being the next Bush. He also managed to (finally) cast doubt of McCain's supposed maverick credentials, and their increasingly noticeable absence in this campain

Palin grated on me throughout, not just her voice, but also the way she treated the whole thing as an opportunity to pivot to any topic she has pre-prepared lines about. Maybe her folksy manner is appealing to some voters, but she appeared out of her depth.

And I'll tell you what else. She's lining for a run at the nomination in 2012. So much of what she said last night was about her and her record, not that of her principal. Plus, the way she, this morning, openly contested the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan - it's like she knows this race is lost, so its time to push herself forward.

(By the way, I've always thought I too have a folksy charm: the way you can tell is that I have the word "folksy" in my vocabulary, and use it to describe elements of my personaility. And it isn't just my charm that is folksy. I also have a folksy shouting at the elderly for getting in my way, and a folksy addiction to petrol fumes.)

Anyway, I'm going to miss all this come November.

I thought I was being smart. I invested all my savings in a souffle bank.

It collapsed.