It’s a little late for Valentine’s Day, but here’s kind of an interesting exercise in testing your emotional preferences for the top four presidential candidates.  Via Pandagon, here’s the Implicit Association Test.  It asks you at the start of the test what your candidate preferences are, and then puts you through a rapid-response drill involving photographs of the candidates and associative words.

Leaving aside questions about a methodology that seems to correlate hand-eye coordination with emotional preferences somehow, and an observation that some of the photos of Obama and Clinton in the test were rather unflattering, Historiann is more than a little disturbed to report her results:  While Hillary Clinton came out as my top candidate emotionally (natch), Huckabee and McCain were dead even with each other not very far behind her.  (I kind of get that with McCain, whose photos as a young Navy officer strongly resemble a close member of my family when he was a young man, but Huck?)  Obama came out at the bottom, much to my surprise–perhaps I’ve been overly influenced by some of his supporters on the internets, who seem to be hatin’ on Hillary more than they love their man.  All of the candidates in my preference profile were fairly closely grouped together, within 2-3 points of each other, so perhaps these relative rankings aren’t important.  It might be fun to revisit this test later in the campaign.

How do your intellectual preferences square with your emotions?  (The test is pretty painless and takes only 10 minutes or less, depending on how speedy you are.)  Any big surprises for you?

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful–after all, I didn’t think there would be any new episodes coming our way because of the writers’ strike, and that therefore there would be no resoluton to the tornado cliffhanger as to whether Lynette’s entire family was killed or not–but has anyone noticed how no one on Wisteria Lane has a job any more?  (Aside from the medical professionals, Orson Hodge and the new OB-GYN guy.)  How can they afford it–do they all have incredible disability insurance or something?  Gabby was always the decorative doll, and Bree the more-perfect-than-Martha housewife, but Susan allegedly is a children’s book author, and Lynette was a high-powered executive, but neither apparently even thinks about work any more.  (And I don’t think that Tom’s restaurant is a going concern, either.)  Mike is in rehab, and (SPOILER ALERT) Carlos is hospitaized and blind, so how does anyone pay the bills?  My best guess is that they’re living off of cash they borrowed on a fat re-fi back in 2005. 

The one woman who still apparently has a job is Edie–and is it just a coincidence that she’s the perpetually single “bad girl” always trying to steal other people’s husbands or boyfriends?  (See my entry below about women being demonized for actually expecting a paycheck.)  I think not!

DH follows the formula–perfected by Louisa May Alcott, and updated by Candace Bushnell–of 4 girls or women, each with a distinctive personality type, trying to navigate this modern world.  But at least Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy fretted about the money that wasn’t coming in while Mr. March was serving in the war, and Meg and Jo (as I recall) took, you know, jobs to help Marmee make ends meet (and retain their servant!).  And Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte (until she married) all had jobs–although they never appeared to work at them, or to work out, and somehow they always had plenty of cash and discretionary calories to gossip and drink in restaurants and bars.  But, officially anyway, they had a viable means of support.