in other news

tomorrow is election day, so get out there and do your part to stop the insanity by helping the democrats retake congress. i won't bother with the usual wankery of making predictions about who will win and how many seats the dems will gain. instead, here are some other interesting stories, some political, some not.

• perhaps the funniest story of the election season: because automated political calls are illegal in indiana, the NRCC had to hire actual flesh-and-blood people to make calls attacking tom hayshurst's position on immigration. unfortunately, the firm they hired used call centers overseas, and "the messages were delivered by voices with Indian or Hispanic accents". the calls were in support of republican mark souder... if you could decipher what they were talking about. and unfortunately for souder, because the calls were an independent expenditure (just like the anti-dickerson mailers sent out by the DCCC), souder can't do a thing to stop them. this would be amusing no matter what the calls were about, but the fact that they were about immigration makes it that much more hilarious.
• megapastor and indianan ted haggard has been permanently fired by his chuch after stories surfaced that he enjoys meth-fuled monthly sexcapades with gay prostitutes. last week, he tried to claim that he had only gone to the hooker for a massage, and that he had indeed bought hundreds of dollars worth of meth, but didn't use it. now he has confessed to "sexual immorality".
• the borat movie was #1 at the box office this weekend, despite being on only 1/3 as many screens as the competition. in fact, it "broke the box-office record for a movie opening at fewer than 1,000 locations. It bested Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opened at $23.9 million in 2004." when we saw it on saturday, the theatre was packed.
• boingboing reports that a new gaming shop called "games to die for" is opening on indy's far west side. the hideous website states that the store specializes "in card games, miniature games, roleplaying games, and board games!" the shop also has 1,000 square feet of open gaming space. on saturday, they'll host a star wars tournament to benefit riley hospital. good news for local gamers, but seriously, the shop's website is god-awful... the worst i've seen in weeks.
• and finally, saddam hussein was sentenced to death by hanging over the weekend, but the verdict was curiously incomplete. as nbc's richard engel explains:

In less than 10 minutes, Saddam Hussein was told he was guilty of crimes against humanity, but never exactly how or why.

The full verdict, a document of several hundred pages, explaining how and why today’s judgment was reached was not released. U.S. officials said it should be ready by Thursday. So why issue the verdict today? U.S. court advisors told reporters today it was delayed mainly for technical reasons. All insist the verdict was not politically timed and that it was an Iraqi decision; there is no reason to doubt their word.

there's "no reason to doubt their word"... except that it defies common sense. of course the verdict was politically timed. and they found out that they couldn't actually complete the verdict in time, so they announced the sentence this weekend and will get around to figuring out the reasoning sometime this week. ¶