Below is a list of questions. Please answer TRUE or FALSE.

1. Do you read the newspaper every day to get the latest update on your candidate?

2. Do you get online and check out the buzz in the blogosphere about your candidate?

3. Do you watch TV to hear what the pundits are saying about your candidate?

OK. If you answered TRUE to all of these questions, you should move on to the next set of questions.

1. After reading the newspaper do your eyeballs start rolling around like cherries in a slot machine?

2. After you get online, does fire start spurting out of your ears? Also nostrils?

3. After watching TV does your head do a 360 degree turn on your neck like Linda Blair's head in "The Exorcist"? And then does your head explode because, seriously, can you even believe what new outrage people are peddling about your candidate today?

COME ON, PEOPLE! GIVE ME A BREAK! STOP TALKING SMACK ABOUT MY CANDIDATE! AND ALSO STOP BEING SO STUPID! IN FACT, GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW SO I CAN PERSONALLY. STOP. MAKING. YOU. BE. SO. STUPID!

OK. If you answered "true" to all these questions then, dude. I'm not kidding. It's time to ask yourself if the current political climate is making you feel as hostile as it's making me feel.

I pretty much realized I've gone around the hostility bend the other day when I noticed a car just ahead of me, plastered with stickers supporting the other candidate. For some reason, those bumper stickers made my blood pressure shoot straight through the ceiling (although technically speaking it shot through the "sunroof," designed to maximize my driving pleasure).

I imagined myself challenging the driver with the bumper stickers to a nationally televised debate. Or BETTER YET! A RUMBLE! Yes! Why settle for nationally televised sissy debates when violence is an option? I am such a genius!

So. Anyway. I imagined myself (aka "the Sharks") challenging the driver (aka "the Jets") to a rumble, which I would easily win OF COURSE because of my premium girl hair-pulling skills.

Ha! Take that, you silly, misguided bumper sticker-plastering driver!

By the time I caught up with the other car, I was ready to go. You and me! Mano a mano! And then I saw that the driver was about the same age as my grandfather, who would be like 120 years old if he were still alive. So there I was. All set to challenge a guy who was 120 years old to a cage fight.

Yeah. Bad moment.

For me personally it's time to dial it down, to do a politics detox. Turn off the TV. Stay offline. Keep away from the op-ed page. I've already made up my mind, and I'm comfortable with my decision.

Meanwhile, I need to write myself a Serenity Prayer — something about the importance of staying civil, accepting another's honest disagreement, remembering that there's always more (I hope) that unites than divides us ...

And then recite it daily.

---

E-mail: acannon@desnews.com