The incumbent has staked his campaign on the war on terror. But those who speak the language of the Trek warrior race–known to disdain dishonor, or quvHa’ghach–seem alienated by Iraq and other issues.

It’s too early for Kerry to chill the ceremonial bloodwine, but Portland Klingons are clearly warming to the cerebral Massachusetts Democrat.

But for whom would Kor vote? For whom?

… well, in five years, anyway.

NBC announced Monday that Conan O’Brien will take over from Jay Leno as host of “The Tonight Show.” But he’ll have time to write his jokes — the planned succession won’t happen until 2009.

According to the Sun, temperatures will continue to drop this coming week. Hoorah! For the pizza delivery drivers among us, this means one thing: more money! Also: more stress, more miles on the car, more near collisions with deer.

Last Saturday night, I had the first taste of the coming dinner night rushes. It is hard to explain the nature of the business if you’ve never worked in a pizza shop before. We’ll have two guys working inside - taking phone orders, making pizzas and subs and salads, working their asses off so that when we, the drivers, hustle into the store, our orders are prepped and ready to go.

At my independently-owned pizza shop, most nights there are only two drivers. During the week this works out well - it is just the right amount, and we both make lots of money. On Saturday nights, it gets a bit more hectic, and on the rare nights when there are three drivers, we’re still getting our butts kicked.

The run starts when you walk into the store and put your hot-bags (if you’ve chosen to use them) under the sub-table. You walk over to the oven and look at the pizza boxes and sandwich bags stacked atop. Usually, the inside crew is either too busy to route you, or aren’t familiar enough with the area to route you. The first step you must do is to determine which order is the oldest. In more modern shops, with computer systems, the computer identifies the oldest order - but this shop uses the tried-and-true “guest check” system. Identifying the oldest order, you also quickly determine which are also heading in the sometimes general direction - sometimes this can be identified as vaguely as “west” (meaning anything to the ‘west’ of the store regardless of how far north or south it is).

Bagging up your runs, and making sure to account for side items - sodas, salads, etcetra - and jumping into your car, the routing begins. Some nights you may have a simple group: three deliveries up to Loveton, maybe two to Cranbrook Road. Some nights you’ve got a single to Cuba, three out to Falls, one to Jerome Jay, and two Mays Chapels atop of that. Loveton is north. Cuba is northwest. Falls is West. Jerome Jay and Mays Chapel are both south.

Talk about a headache.

I can’t wait.

Well … I do hog the laundry machines in the building, and sometimes I play the music a little *too* loud a little *too* late at night, so maybe I am …

But though I think Kerry is probably beyond the point of credibly reassuring me on the war, I invite him to move left and join me in open support for gay marriage, drug legalization, and abortion rights without any of that “personally opposed but still in favor” weaseling.

So writes Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. I have to admit that on the surface, “personally opposed but still in favor” can quite seem like weaseling (or, for the anti-Kerry among us, “waffling”).

Is it, though? Is it not perhaps possible to have conflicting moral views about a behavior while at the same time recognizing that people have a right to engage in it? I think it is!

I am personally opposed to abortion. There. I said it. It’s the last remaining shreds of Catholicism within my person (the rest long since abandoned). However! I am also opposed to the anti-choice crowd: those who would seek to make abortion illegal. “Wait”, I can hear some people asking, “Doesn’t that make you pro-abortion?” Well, no, it makes me pro-choice. Why am I pro-choice? Because I have no right to tell another person what they can or can’t do with their body. Because in the event of a banning of legal, safe abortions, I fear the result of massive back-alley abortions, which would result in the deaths of many pregnant women who otherwise would survive.

So, Glenn, I’m going to have to say (y’know, me the flea, you the big mighty lion, like you’re going to listen to me anyway…) that it isn’t always weaseling. Some views are simply too complex … too many shades of grey …

(Which, by the way, was an awful episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” … just horrible).