Quick, hide! It's almost November 2nd.

Maybe I'm in a social commentary mood (ok: MK, I'm glad you're back in New York and thanks, Gawker, for giving me the impotant news), but this was a totally rad essay in this week's Village Voice, by Hua Hsu, who besides being a Harvard student, is also Hip-Hop columnist for eMusic.

In it, he writes about the American citizens' engagement in the thing Americans like to think is their defining and superior characterisitc: choice.

"It's a commonly held misperception that Americans don't vote. Americans love to vote. The problem is that we vote for inane things. We vote on competing but really conspiring blends of Coca-Cola. We vote on who we believe will win the World Series or whether a given coach bungled a crucial third down. We vote people to the zenith of prefab pop stardom, often over the objections of bona fide talent scouts. We vote on issues of other people's matrimony and during the commercial breaks, Internet providers and cable music video channels mainline election-year imagery and jockey for our 'votes.'"

Choice, it's a funny thing. Americans are, in fact, always voting for something, and it seems like, while there are always third parties, commerce increasingly nudges us toward a two party system: Coke or Pepsi? McDonald's or Burger King? Ok, maybe that's a bit simplistic.

But I do feel a lot like in this campaign, I'm being forced to choose between candidates whose politics are fundamentally not all that different, they just employ different advertising agencies. I mean, yeah, obviously there's no question which is the one for me: Burger King, all the way!

So, Senator Kerry, can I get fries with that?