1. Really great costume that never comes off, or a politician to vote for?

2. Castro's best line, via The Simpsons: "Americans are not so bad. They even named a street after me in San Francisco! [aide whispers in his ear] It's full of what?!"

3. Election Days in the United States always fall on a Tuesday. This is because people who had to travel long distances to vote didn't want to travel on Sunday, their day of rest, so they would leave for the polling place on a Monday and return after casting their ballots. The religious right: Dictating America's elections for three centuries running!

4. Reformation Day celebrates the day Martin Luther tacked his 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg: October 31st. Ooooooh, spooky!

5. What is rarely talked about is that most of 95 Theses were conceived while Luther was on the toilet. You can even see the outhouse where he did his best work these days! Just think, if Luther had just eaten more fiber, millions of people might not have died in the wars surrounding the Reformation! Eat your fiber.

6. When I am king, you will be first against the wall. Just kidding! Vote Stu for King!

7. No, not you, the guy standing next to you! No, not him...oh, forget it. You're all going up against the wall.

8. In "Attack of the Clones," we learn that "Queen" Amidala is no longer queen, because the queenship is an elected post on Naboo. Seriously, how fucking stupid is that? George Lucas is that unsure of how sympathetic his characters are that he has to make royalty into a democratically elected post?!

9. Queen Amidala has very little to do with Halloween, Election Day, or the Reformation. I just thought it was a fucking stupid idea that needed to be underscored. Plus, shit like that makes it harder for me to stalk Natalie Portman, when her only watchable movie is "The Professional," and she's like 11 in that. (I am, for this punchline, pretending "Garden State" doesn't exist).

10. Humbert Humbert is one of my favorite narrators in all of English literature. This is something I shouldn't bring up until waaaaay past the third date. Why is this germane? Well, doesn't that fact scare the shit out of you?

11. I took a sleeping pill in a vain attempt to get to sleep last night around 3am. It knocked out my limbs, but failed to take down my brain. I was mostly immobile, except for a little bit of flailing, like bloodflow had been cut off to my body below my neck. It was only appropriate to end Halloween stuck in a Edgar Allen Poe story.

12. Kerry is going to win. He's going to win between 280 and 290 of the electoral votes, and win the popular vote by at least a million people. I would bet money on this.

13. If I lose, you can come collect on the bet in a country without an extradition treaty with the United States.