What do we want from our Presidential candidates? Positivity. At the end of the day, we want them to make us feel OK. So The Black Table couldn't help but chuckle when Sen. John Kerry announced he was releasing a "Misery Index" this week. According to the Associated Press, the report "suggests that working families have been hammered by stagnant incomes at a time college and health insurance costs have soared." We don't know what that means, but the idea of a "Misery Index" is something we thought only Elliot Smith could have come up with. We imagine a bunch of Kerry staffers in a back room, wearing Gothic black fishnets and dark mascara, calling each other "Azrael" while punching numbers into their calculator watches.

God, isn't this election here yet?

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The Black Table needs your help! Every week, we need reviews of the latest media-related crud, new products from Capitalists and odd idea, concept or trend. All you need to have is a sharp opinion that you can distill down to one paragraph of 150 words and give a letter grade. To submit, please fill out the form below. Entries may edited for length, style and clarity. Hit us with your best shot. Fire away.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Behind every successful man, they say, is a woman. Last week, President Bush sent his national security advisor to testify in front of the commission investigating 9/11. Most people in the U.S. waited for her entrance into our living rooms to see what this woman was really about. Lefties and haters waited with baited breath to see if she'd crack under pressure, and, if they were ever so lucky, she might even (dare I say) rebut a harsh comment by panel members with a "Oh no you didn't!" Those same idiots prayed at night that Ms. Rice would play the race card and throw the whole Presidential Administration onto a heap of turds. But if you watched it, you would know that she is not only courageous, but a highly educated lady. She made it to where she is not by shaking her ass or baring her breast. In front of the panel, she was calm, cool and measured with her answers. At the end of the day, it was her panel counterparts that often looked foolish and snooty. Oh yes, I reveled in Ms. Rice's performance. She not only showed a awesome example of a strong black woman, she also showed what it is to be a disciplined, hard-working and meritocratic human being. And yes, I'd hit it. A -- Paul Chan

PUTTING BOOBS IN THE CLOSING CREDITS: You've just finished watching a pretty bleak horror picture. You're discussing some of the plot points and neat scares out of this particular picture, and just as you stretch and stand to leave, thinking about the rest of the day, whoa ...

BOOBS! Needless to say, you're sitting through the rest of the credits. Now, this works pretty well for a movie like Dawn of the Dead, but imagine how much this would have improved The English Patient, The Piano or Nurse Betty? Bleak New Zealand landscapes, tragic story, but wait … BOOBS! This may be some sort of discriminatory rating, but for those of you who aren't particularly fascinated by breasts, there are acceptable substitutes. One might even be convinced to sit through more advertisements for this. B+ -- Dave Gaffen

THE APPLICATION FOR "THE AMAZING RACE" AS COUPLES COUNSELING: Communication is important for a healthy relationship, and sometimes that requires outside help. But not everyone has the money for a therapist. Enter "The Amazing Race" application. It's personal, invasive and doesn't pull any punches. Best of all, you can download it for free and fill it out together! Write down your name, height, Social Security Number and whether or not you can drive stick shift, and get ready for "Section 2: Teammate Information." "What is the biggest disappointment you have experienced from your teammate?" "What famous person reminds you of your teammate?" "What is the worst experience you have had with your teammate?" By the time you get to "What is your opinion of foreigners?" in Section 3, you're sitting by yourself, an ice pack over your crotch. At least now you know that "let's be honest" doesn't mean you should tell her she looks like Ernest Borgnine. B+ -- Tom Panarese

THE FREE PREVIEW WEEK OF MLB EXTRA INNINGS PACKAGE: Loving opening day is one thing, but crossing the line and spending every night at home during the first week of baseball season watching as many games as possible is another. This past week I sacrificed sleep to watch West Coast games go 15 innings and live and die with every at-bat. Is there a better way to tempt the itchy trigger finger poised on the add/drop button for my fantasy baseball team? I know the free preview ends soon, and I've considered ordering the whole package. But it's best to wait until the reduced rate after the All-Star Game, right? Then I turn to the Dodgers game and hear Vin Scully, and maybe listening to him alone is worth spending the $149. But maybe the tease is better than forking over this summer's drinking money. B+ -- Marc Balgavy

BOTH OF MY 60-SOMETHING HILLBILLY PARENTS GETTING FACELIFTS: Yes, my very own Beverly Hillbillies. First under the knife: Ma. I came back home for the annual gut-wrenching pressure-filled church family portrait photo to find her face puffed up like a chipmunk's with cheeks full of chaw. As you can imagine, the catty congregation gossips were all a-flutter, their whispers echoing through the nave. After a couple of months, the swelling -- and my shock -- finally subsided. Then pa, claiming he didn't want to look like my mom's granddaddy, got refaced. This was waaaay more freaky; my dad is 6-4, 200, with Popeye forearms, and was, is and always will be James Fucking Dean to me. He now cheerfully chortles about having to shave behind his ears. These are folk who, growing up, didn't have electricity, plumbing, neighbors or more than one pair of shoes at a time. But hey, they've been married 40+ years, are still hotly in love with each other and, I gotta say, look somewhat younger now. B -- hillmarky

VCF: VCF stands for Vaginal Contraceptive Film. It's like those plastic Listerine films, but for your vagina. It's a spermacide that disolves instantly, no messy goo. For those of you women who smoke and are not allowed to be on the pill but hate condoms, this seems like a great contraceptive, right? You and your boyfriend can go at it almost au naturale, and it lasts for up to five hours. But no, this stuff sucks like no other. Unless you and your boyfriend want to experience extreme fire-burning in your genitals, say away from this product. F -- Kathie Fries

PROFANITY ON "DEADWOOD": If you're too lazy to reach the remote after getting your complicated-Mob-drama-that's-really-just-about-family fix, chances are you've seen at least a little of "Deadwood." Maybe you'd wandered away for a moment to wipe the pasta sauce off of your chin and returned to see a bunch of dirty guys in mustaches playing poker, bedding old-timey whores and engaging in some six-shooter gunplay. "Hmm, this looks interesting," you said. And then one of the mustachoied gents unleashed a torrent of f-bombs. "Gee," you said, "these Badlands types had some filthy mouths on them." Perhaps you watched for another minute and heard some more f-bombs, with a "cocksucker" thrown in for good measure. "My, my," you said, "were there even enough homosexuals in the Gold Rush West to inspire such prolific, intolerant epithet-flinging?" You waited another minute and heard a slur you think the writers invented: "squarehead." You're not sure, but you think it applies to Swedes. Now "Deadwood" has your full attention. You note that on your Ikea trip tomorrow, you should probably not mutter "squarehead" under your breath, just in case the writers didn't make it up. You don't want the pretty clerk tampering with your meatballs. C- -- Bunsen

THE SWAN: We settled in for Fox's latest installment in their "We dare you to parody us" series of reality shows, ready for a dose of shocked hilarity from our suitably ironic distance. Within minutes, we simply gaped in awe as two very normal looking women with astonishingly low self-esteem were wheeled in front of a panel of plastic surgeons, who almost recoiled visibly in horror. Kelly, the sobber, is desperately in need of psychiatric counseling and a gym membership, but our experts ticked off her list of physical defects like she was John Merrick. God, how can the girl even go out in public, she's so grotesque? Rachel, the sort-of-big girl, simply needs, as my wife aptly put it, a "father-and-husband-ectomy". Instead, they were put through more surgery then a banana republic dictator preparing to run for the border, followed by brow-beatings by the likes of cheerful Dr. Terry, who was fully prepared to blame poor, dim Kelly for her own post-op depression, leading up to a finale that chooses only one of them to move on to the season-ending beauty pageant of the damned. We also learned that your face needs a "focal point" and "butter will keep you out of the pageant." Horrifying, grotesque ... and we watched the whole god damn thing. The evil geniuses of Fox wins again, those bastards. As entertainment: A. As reflection of society: F -- Brett Rollins

SHIVERING: Shivering is, hands down, the most adorable thing that the human body does. The fact that your body naturally tries to get you moving, get the blood pumping with a rapid succession of small jerks, is just too fucking cute. It's like "Yo! Let's get a move on here. My ass is chapped, and we're hard pressed to find whiskey in this ol' desk drawer." I wish my body did other things that make sense like that, but instead it just snores, farts and chips off half my baby toenail. B+ -- Pjamma

THE JANITOR IN MY OFFICE: So dude, I completely understand that you have a job to do. I mean, hell, I do too. But I dread your return everyday at 5, signaled by the faint squeak of your garbage can wheel at the other end of the office. (You know, that fourth one that barely touches the ground?) Then you roll up on me with that smelly trash can. It's so bad, I can see stink fumes rising out of it like a trash heap in a Heathcliff cartoon. You empty my garbage can, but is it really necessary to check on the progress of my Diet Coke by lifting it up and giving it a shake? You're wearing gloves, for crying out loud! I know you've been up to your elbows in asses and toilets before you touch my soda. So please, next time, do us both a fucking favor and toss it, if you're going to touch it at all. D+ -- EDS

CREAM CHEESE: Cream cheese is a fraud. It's a cheese, right? It says so right in the name: cream cheese. But for some reason, cream cheese doesn't run with the other cheeses. Cream cheese thinks it's too fucking cool to hang out with the old cheese crew, like Cheddar and Swiss. It's like cream cheese was a big dork in high school and then graduated and was going off to college where nobody knew cream cheese, and cream cheese could remake itself to be whoever it wanted to be. And cream cheese did it. It totally showed up one day and started hanging out with the "cool" dairy products like Whipped Cream and Butter. Cream cheese is not being true to itself. And you know when the supermarket closes at night, cream cheese is talking to its new buddy, Snack-Size Chocolate Pudding, saying "Yeah, I'm supposed to go visit my old friends," and it shows up at the deli case, and all the other cheeses are like, "Hey, Cream, what's up? We hardly recognize you." And cream cheese is all, "Look, I gotta go, but great to see you guys, really." Cream cheese is a dick. C- -- Jason Reich

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