Tomorrow, I’ll be blogging live from spots around the city on City Paper’s homepage. I’ll also be twittering every step of the way. Join the Washington City Paper’s twitter feed—updated live on our website—by tweeting to #dcvotes. See you tomorrow!

Photo by Perla*

A week from today, if the McCain-Palin ticket manages an unexpected, mavericky victory and clinches the presidency, low-rent bloggers, editorial cartoonists, and Hustler will all silently rejoice. Sarah Palin has been a Wasilla-Assembly-of-God-send for Web traffic numbers (Exhibits A and B) since her sudden Sept. nomination as McCain’s veep. News of Hustler’s Palin spoof porn alone has sent thousands of clicks to this modest local outfit. To those googling for “sarah palin adult film,” “palin porn preview,” and “adult film stars palin look-a-like“: I salute you!

If Palin doesn’t push her running mate over the edge by Election Day, it’s going to be a real ratings suck for Internet publications across the blogosphere. What new trend could possibly replace Palin? Here are five suggestions, based on this blog’s other top google hits. Integrate these lessons into your Web copy, and it’s smooth sailin’ until 2012.

5. Lindsay Lohan. Ever since Lindsay Lohan went gay, she’s been even more like Web traffic honey: sweet and sticky. Work Lindsay + Lohan + gay into your blog posts, sprinkle on a coating of Samantha + Ronson, and let the admirers, the haters, and the perverts roll in.

Read More “Goobye, Sarah Palin; Oh Fuck, What Are We Gonna Do Now?” »

* Evil Slutopia finds this sweet Joe Biden cupcake, via my.barackobama.com.

* Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have got nothin’ on this lady: She advocated for sexual freedom, wore tons of booty ruffles, and ran for president back when most women couldn’t even vote. Plus, she was clairvoyant! NPR’s “All Things Considered” looks back at the first female to run for president, Victoria Woodhull.

* Esquire names Halle Berry the “Sexiest Woman Alive” (no quibbles), “re-enacts” famous Bill Clinton cover with Berry sitting in for Bubba (minor quibble: whither the pants, shirt of Clintonian era?)

* Beware the rogue knitted tree trunk. Outsapop names a new trend in the world of craft: Knitgraffiti.

* For some reason, infoplease wants to know which famous politician you’d want to adopt your children if you died: “Which of these political couples would you select as guardians for your child/children in the event something happened to you and your spouse or partner?”

Because in the event of your death, Joe and Jill Biden, John and Cindy McCain, Barack and Michelle Obama, and First Dude and Sarah Palin will definitely not have anything better to do but raise a stranger’s children. (Yeah, yeah, you can vote here). Current results:

Barack & Michelle Obama	36%
Todd & Sarah Palin	32%
Joe & Jill Biden	17%
John & Cindy McCain	16%
Total votes cast: 3047

This week’s Rolling Stone fronts a sprawling, 10-page piece that reveals, in excruciating detail, how big a dick John McCain really is. “Make-Believe Maverick” by Tim Dickinson, gives the Straight Talk Express treatment to McCain’s war stories, campaign history, plane crashes, even his childhood temper tantrums. Dickinson’s account is sprinkled with anecdotes that reveal McCain’s lifelong contempt for the women in his life. And there were a lot of women.

Read the whole thing—there are almost as many horrific plane crashes as there are extramarital affairs!—or read on for The Sexist’s highlights. Below, all the sham marriages, Chelsea Clinton jokes, and easy Rio flings you can shake a big stick at!

* Dickinson opens the story with the following exchange, between McCain and an old war acquaintance (as Dickinson reveals, few could reasonably be described as “friend”):

“I’m going to the Middle East,” Dramesi says. “Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.”

“Why are you going to the Middle East?” McCain asks, dismissively.

“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says. “Why? Where are you going to, John?”

“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”

“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

“I got a better chance of getting laid.”

* And so begins our private look into John McCain’s storied bone/hate affair with the female sex. The contempt for women began early on, Dickinson reports. Take this anecdote from McCain’s school days, where he earned, if nothing else, the nickname “McNasty”:

McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father’s taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.

* As the Republican nominee aged, his innocent profanity charges blossomed into full-blown, alcohol-fueled misogyny tomcattery. “He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly,” writes Dickinson. “Before meeting a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman’s uniform.”

* McCain’s “dating experience” in the Navy continued along the same lines. McCain “chased a lot of tail,” Dickinson reports. “He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn’t.”

* And then, suddenly, came love:

In 1964, while still at the base, McCain began a serious romance with Carol Shepp, a vivacious former model who had just divorced one of his classmates from Annapolis. Commandeering a Navy plane, McCain spent most weekends flying from Meridian to Philadelphia for their dates. They married the following summer.

* And then, inevitably, came contempt:

If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband’s equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. . . . The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his “long tall Sally” was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches. . . . By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.

* And then, McCain learned to love (and hastily divorce) again:

In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they “cohabitated as husband and wife” for the first nine months of the affair.

* And then, finally, he learned to totally flip his shit:

During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain’s wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was “getting a little thin up there.” McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.

* But through it all, McCain came away with a Hail Mary GOP fund-raiser joke that managed to somehow demean both Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno at the same time:

the senator told a joke about President Clinton’s teenage daughter at a GOP fundraiser. “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?” McCain asked. “Because her father is Janet Reno!”