Do you know how difficult it is to find the Downloads page on John McCain’s campaign web site? (Yeah, even though I apparently found it once before, to get the button in my sidebar.) So difficult that after roughly ten minutes of searching, I had to advance-Google “downloads” at site johnmccain.com. That takes you to the page, all right, for which there apparently is no direct link from the menus on the home page at all. (Update: I found the link, through the Action–>Action Center–>Site Tools path. One rollover and two clicks off the home page and utterly unintuitive.)

Once I found it, I was surprised to see there are no buttons for McCain/Palin, nor any stickers or signs for the duo in McCain’s online store. What gives, web and publicity people? You make a major announcement that will definitely get bloggers fired up, and then don’t have stuff available for us to show how fired up we are? Roll out the Mr. & Mrs. Maverick buttons and stickers. Put a link to the Downloads page on the main site. The web moves fast. Keep up!

Update x2: Made my own, cropped from the campaign site’s banner, inspired by Carlos Echevarria.

Update x3: Slu the Photoshop King made more, with pics.

Sarah Palin!

McCain faked this so well that he left Allah woozy. Up through last night they were running down the list of men, some crusty (Lieberman) and others not-so-much (Pawlenty), so uncertain that they even dragged Thompson back out.

Politically speaking: Flat-out awesome choice. Young, married mother of five, governor of Alaska, living symbol of ending pork-barrel spending, as it was she who killed the Bridge to Nowhere.

Come on over, disgruntled Hillary voters. Elect a pair of Republicans after eight years of the Most Hated Republicans on Earth. Be mavericks.

David Duchovny enters rehab.

For sex addiction.

Apparently, they are not making this up. Usual boilerplate about “please respect the privacy of my wife and children as we deal with this” applies.

In one of those ironic twists that sometimes happens when you get a question in Trivial Pursuit on a topic you just happened to be discussing two hours ago, just today I actually read the blurb in Us where he talked about Tea passing out from getting steamy in a sauna.

H/t Ace’s headlines.

Huckabee says he was never vetted for Veep. Which makes McCain … at the very least, not less smart than I thought he was.

NBC picks up the back half of the upcoming second season of Chuck. I had no idea that was even a question. Best. Show. On. TV.

Blood-boiling industry jargon of the day:

NBC is giving an early vote of confidence to “Chuck,” picking up the back nine episodes of the sophomore skein.

Skein? Where did this even come from? Were they calling seasons “threads” and then needed a fresh word, so they went to “skein?” I hate this. It doesn’t make any sense. A “thread” might be borderline, since you can talk about plot threads, etc. A skein of television shows is just pure, unadulterated nonsense.

And yes, nonsense industry jargon really does make my blood boil. Yes, I know you raise your eyebrows in consternation because inappropriate word use makes my blood boil. That’s why I’m an editor and you’re not.

On what planet is “Hot Wheels” a “sports” theme for a child’s birthday party, but soccer is not? Thanks for zip.

ABC has picked up five pilots, including Nathan Fillion’s (and director Rob Bowman’s) Castle and Rob Thomas’s Cupid.

That latter one sound familiar? It’s a remake of Rob Thomas’s one-season Cupid from 1998, with Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson in the Jeremy Piven/Paula Marshall roles. I caught maybe all of one episode when it was on before, but I understand it had a reasonably rabid cult following. Will they like the new cast? If nothing else I’ll be able to compare the Sorkin/Thomas chops of Paulson to Marshall–Paula went from playing a porn actress on Sorkin’s Sports Night to playing a guidance counselor who falls for Veronica’s dad in Veronica Mars, and now Paulson goes from Sorkin’s West Wing right on to Cupid. I guess all we need now is for Paula Marshall to guest on a Whedon show, as Sarah Paulson had her bit as a doomed hologram in Serenity. Trifecta.

And if you are still so benighted as to never have seen Veronica Mars, get thee to a Netflix envelope. She is in serious running for my favorite show of all time, people. Does that make me a nostalgic nerd bemoaning my unbrilliant teenage years? Maybe! Do I care? No. For that matter, I know there are still some deprived souls among you who haven’t even watched my Fillion in Firefly. And to that I can only say, can the Veronica, shame on me, ditch the Firefly, shame on you.

Is there much worse, in things sleep-related, to wake up at six, decide there’s nothing really to get up for and you can stay in bed, and wander back into slumber only to have a nightmare?

… even though it is. It’s that it’s wrinkly. Good grief. That fabric wrinkles if you look at it wrong, and it looks like it just took her hair and face down with it.

Me, hunting for the particular book the Bean wanted to read at bedtime: “Let’s see, if I were Jeremy Fisher, where would I be?”

Son: “You’d be wherever Jeremy Fisher is right now.”

***

Woman arrested after stalking a guy who was her “boyfriend” in “Second Life” … and who broke it off after he met her in person.

They’re only about fifteen years behind the times. We were doing that stuff in college.

Getting involved online, and breaking it off when we met in person, I mean.

Not stalking outside people’s houses with stun guns and duct tape.

At least, not me.

I swear.

Via Ace’s headlines.

And the number of the counting shall be 82 … Cloris Leachman, 82 years old. Yowza. Paired with Mark Ballas’s dad, Corky, which is just awesome.

Here’s the full lineup. The other big news seems to be that 1) Mercifully, Lance Bass will be paired with a woman. It’s not about homosexuality, it’s about dancing, which in a ballroom pairing requires the complementary movements of man v. woman. Period. and 2) Misty May-Treanor and Maksim Chmerkovskiy! He’s back! I’m dubious as to how many moves she’s got, and Maks will have to go far to find a partner more likely to win than Mel B, but Misty May has earned a lot of goodwill from me by the sheer awesomeness of inviting the President of the United States to slap her rump. She and Kerri Walsh were class all the way.

Cheers: Anna Trebunskaya is not back. Jeers: Karina Sneeroff is. But she’s paired with a celebrity chef I know nothing about, so here’s hoping she’ll dance her way off fairly early.

I’m home. And tired. Which I shouldn’t be, so much, because I slept on the plane–determinedly, so that I wouldn’t watch too much of the soundless miniature Prince Caspian playing on the video monitor above my head. I tried listening through the earphones–“Maybe it won’t be so bad to watch it on the plane!”–but the tiny sound still managed to be screamingly shrill, so I ripped off the earphones and shut my eyes. By the time I woke up, Caspian was conqueror and king and, on the DVD player in the next seat over, JFK was dead but not buried, and we were flying over eastern Oregon. Mission accomplished.