Millions of mind guerrillas

At my local hardware store, presidential candidate puzzles appeared for sale in October. (To add some flavor to the display there was puzzle glue and darts positioned nearby to enable puzzle purchasers to make their own dartboards.) Every time I was in the store, I noted the number of puzzles on display and wondered which was the better seller. Although the store is in the Socialist Republic of Mpls, I thought the free market might have something different to say about the relative popularity of the candidates.

Yesterday I received my answer. The store initially ordered 10 Obama puzzles and (just to have some balance I was told) 3 McCain puzzles. Final score: 10 Obama sold and 0 McCain sold.

But I think McCain's puzzle had a distinct disadvantage. With a background of skeletal post-nuclear holocaust trees, it looked more like an advertisement for Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. (Added bonus irony: he's leaning against Greek columns, an architectural element subject to right-wing derision when they were part of Obama's DNC stagecraft.)

In the end, McCain suffers too because his name, which doesn't alternate vowels and consonants like Obama's, is not crossword puzzle-friendly.