It Doesn't Mean Squat

Well now that the final Presidential debate of the 2012 elections in over, I can finally give my, highly anticipated, detailed, arch overview of the candidates and the election thus far; just in time for the critical final two weeks before Election Day. Now I want everyone to know that, despite its warts, I hold the American democratic process in high esteem and consider our nation's two hundred plus year history of free elections and steady transitions of power to be an under appreciated minor miracle in and of itself. I understand that for this process to be optimal we need an informed electorate that is well aware of the important issues of the day with a thorough, unbiased, understanding of the stances of all parties involved. With that high ideal in mind, I will attempt to give my personal take on this election as a whole.

You know what actually I just want to note how this article I came across last week about a lady who is forced to live with a squatter in her home felt like a romantic comedy set up (I'm actually starting to dig these false starts, too bad I'll have to stop now before they start becoming predictable). So anyway the gist of the article mentions that the owner of a house in Detroit had left her home for an extended period of time so that it could undergo extensive repairs, but when she came back some other lady had made herself at home. There's a whole legal battle over whether the home was actually abandoned by the former and in the mean time the original owner and her child  has to live with the alleged squatter (who according to the article is also running a write in campaign for president...so I guess that's some election related coverage right there).

Obviously if you want to convert this situation into a standard romantic comedy, you switch one of the genders around, give both individuals wildly conflicting personalities, close the lid and shake for 90 minutes. While you're at it you might as well age the kid up a bit and make them cute and freakishly precocious  Eventually after three acts of conflict you have them acknowledge that they truly belong together. I suppose the classy example of this sort of set up of people being forced to live together would be Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl". However I admit the movie I thought about first was the atrocious "What Happens in Vegas", a movie so derivative and cliche and encompassing all that is wrong with the genre that it almost looks like a parody of a bad romantic comedy (the scene in the trailer where Judge Dennis Miller sentences Diaz and Kutcher to 6 months of "hard marriage" just about sums it up).

As for the title, it's still a work in progress. In addition to the above title I have off the top of my head "The Squatter's Right" and "Squat to Trot".