The L.A. Times says that the folks making the case for Proposition 8 in California (the anti-gay marriage amendment) are basically lying to make that case. Is anyone surprised?

I've fixed it but a couple of posts ago, I accidentally said there were 438 electoral votes at stake instead of 538. What happened was that I composed a message that was correct, then I decided it was too long and I decided to trim it down. In the untrimmed version, I was writing about a person who'd projected (in our little contest) that Obama would get 438…and when I cut that part out, I left in part of the wrong sentence and…well, I've corrected it. Thanks to the 538 of you who've written in to point this out.

Ignore this message if you're not going to be in San Francisco on Saturday, February 28, 2009. That would mean you're not going to be attending the Wondercon in that city that weekend.

If you are attending the Wondercon (or even if you're just in Frisco for other reasons — like, say, you live there) this might interest you. I often wax enthusiastic here about Frank Ferrante and his wonderful show, An Evening With Groucho. In it, Frank somehow turns himself into Groucho Marx for a couple of hours, during which he tells the man's life story, sings his best songs and insults almost everyone in the first eight rows. A great theatrical experience if I do say so…and since it's my blog, I get to say so.

Frank is doing two performances in San Francisco on 2/28/09. They're at 5 PM and 8 PM at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. If you wanna go, order tickets now because they seem to be selling quickly. One reason for that may be that I've bought out an entire row for the 8 PM performance…but also, Frank is popular in that town from the work he does in his "other" job, starring in Teatro ZinZanni. So if you want to come as close as you're ever going to come to spending an evening with Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, act now.

I'm going to stop looking at the polls. We're down to thinking fluctuations of one or two points matter when in fact, they're all just "noise" and well within the margin of error. You could get some deadly form of ping-pong whiplash looking at the Senate race in Minnesota: Franken's up two points, Coleman's up one, Franken's up one, Coleman's up three, etc. That one could easily go either way and no poll today or tomorrow is going to change that. (It may rain Tuesday in Minnesota. None of the polls have even tried to determine if maybe one candidate's supporters are less likely to go out in the rain to vote for him.)

You should stop looking at polls and you should especially stop looking at Zogby. Mr. Zogby seems like a nice, serious man when I see him interviewed but his poll has achieved something, at least with me, that is rare in this world. I not only don't believe him when he has my candidates behind. Everyone does that to some extent. I don't even believe him when he shows my candidates winning. Zogby's been so consistently random and erratic that when his polls tell me something I want to have be so, I can't even gin up a little, "Well, maybe he got this one right."

We have many hundreds of entries in our little prizeless contest to guess Barack Obama's electoral total. You still have time to enter or change your guess (I'm sticking with 349) and the details are here. Guesses made so far range from 0 to 538 and there are possible numbers no one has guessed so take a chance. This is your golden opportunity to win nothing.

I did receive one complaint that it showed "hidden bias" that I was asking folks to predict Obama's total and not McCain's…or maybe the correspondent thought I should ask you to predict both. There's no hidden bias here. I've said I think Obama would be a much better Chief Exec than John McCain and I have an Obama-Biden banner posted, as well. And predicting Obama's total is the same thing as predicting McCain's since together, they'll total 538. Mr. Barr and Mr. Nader ain't cutting into that number. I just picked Obama because I had to pick one…and anyway, his total looks to be the more interesting of the two.

Well, Tuesday should go swimmingly. There'll be no huge lines at the polls prompting voting hours to be extended…and, incidentally, foul up any networks' plans to call the presidential race early. No voting machines will malfunction and clearly register votes for the wrong candidate. No large group of people will show up at the polls and find that for no visible reason, they've been stricken from the eligibility roster. No one will speak of lawsuits to void the vote in any area or speak of "stolen elections." Everything will be just ginger peachy.

Seriously, a lot of us just want it over. How long has it been since you heard anything from either candidate that might have changed your mind? That video the other day showing how many times they repeated themselves in the three debates made the point well. We long ago got to know these guys as well as we were ever going to. I actually could have done with more one-on-one interviews if — and this would be a big if — we had a different kind of journalist than we usually have asking the questions…someone well-versed enough to challenge questionable facts and assertions and inventive enough to veer into areas for which the candidate didn't have stock answers. I'm not sure there is such a journalist…or if there is that any candidate would sit down with him or her. It says something when some of the toughest questions put to John McCain came from David Letterman.

Anyway, between now and Tuesday, the two campaigns have opposing chores: The McCain forces have to convince their supporters that there's a decent chance of winning and the Obama team has to convince their supporters than there's a decent chance of losing. It isn't enough to convince them you're the guy. You have to get them to go out and actually vote.

It's always painful to see a friend of yours make a fool of herself.

As we discussed back here, there's a silly fascination with what the candidates eat…like Hispanics are more likely to vote for someone after they've seen him eat a taco. Here's a slide show of Obama and McCain eating in public. There's a shot in there of McCain and Palin at Arthur Bryant's Barbecue in Kansas City as discussed here. In fact, I think that's the same table where Sergio Aragonés and I ate a week later. I remember it had a good view of Russia.

Garry Trudeau has gone ahead and drawn next week's Doonesbury strips to presume an Obama win on Tuesday. Amazingly, some newspapers are considering not running the strips because…well, even after reading this article and this article, I'm not sure I understand the reason. If Obama wins, fine. A lot of these same newspapers are practically awarding Obama the job on their front pages. What's the big deal if Wednesday's comic strip mentions it?

And if Obama loses…well, that's funny. I mean, it won't be funny for the country but McCain supporters will be too busy dancing to complain. Or if they do notice, it will just add to their glee to see Trudeau make a jerk of himself. I really don't see the problem.

It does bring to mind 1960 when MAD Magazine had an issue going on sale a day or two after that year's presidential election. The issue was long since printed, of course, and it had been configured with two covers — one congratulating Kennedy on his victory and one congratulating Nixon. The insides of the magazine were arranged so that half the innards faced one way and half faced the other…so neither cover was really the front cover.

There was no controversy then but I always thought there was an aspect of it worth debating. Let's say you were a newsstand proprietor and you're putting those issues on display right after Election Day. Which cover do you feature? The Kennedy one because it's accurate? Or the Nixon one because that would be funnier? I've polled the editors of MAD from back then and they weren't sure. Bill Gaines, the publisher, said he didn't care but he hoped the two covers prompted some people to buy two copies.

Lastly, do you all know about the World's Greatest Crossword Puzzle? It ran in The New York Times on Tuesday, November 5, 1996, which was Election Day for the contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Here — this video will tell you all about it…

One of my favorite writers, Studs Terkel, has died at the age of 96. I have nothing special to add to that…just that he was one of my favorite authors and I thought his passing should be noted.

You can read some of his writings and listen to him just talk over on this page.

That was a joke. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not believe marriage is between a man and several women. There were and apparently still are folks who call(ed) themselves Mormons who have thought polygamy was a peachy, even divinely-directed practice. But the official Mormon Church, which is pouring money into California to bolster Proposition 8, does not. Apparently, they got rid of multiple wives when they realized that meant multiple in-laws.

Each year at this time, I direct you to this posting of mine in which I explain why I've never liked Halloween and why no one really likes candy corn.

Each year, it prompts a batch of mail from sane people who agree with me that Halloween is a bad institution. It also however brings in e-mails from congenital liars who claim they actually eat and enjoy candy corn. Jeez. You people are almost as bad as the fibbers who claim cole slaw is edible.

This Halloween, as with most Halloweens in years past, no adorable little trick-or-treaters will come to my door seeking candy that they shouldn't eat because it's from strangers. Just in case someone does show up however, I've bought treats to hand out — little Halloween-themed bags of pretzels. I bought these because I'm going to wind up eating the treats myself and while I don't eat candy, I do eat pretzels. One time a few years ago, I did this with little boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins and a kid reacted in horror. It was like I didn't like children so I was giving them something semi-healthy. Hey, if I didn't like children, I'd give them candy corn. Or worse, cole slaw.