If I could write like P.J. O'Rourke...

I'd get back in the swing of posting something just about every day. As an additional bonus, I'd get to go cool places, like the deck of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevel and then say things like the following:

Carrier launches are astonishing events. The plane is moved to within what seems like a bowling alley's length of the bow. A blast shield larger than any government building driveway Khomeini-flipper rises behind the fighter jet, and the jet's twin engines are cranked to maximum thrust. A slot-car slot runs down the middle of the bowling alley. The powered-up jet is held at the end of its slot by a steel shear pin smaller than a V-8 can. When the shear pin shears the jet is unleashed and so is a steam catapult that hurls the plane down the slot, from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds. And--if all goes well--the airplane is airborne. This is not a pilot taking off. This is a pilot as cat's eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infinite forefinger of Heaven's own Wham-O slingshot.

P.J., of course, uses the spectacle of the carrier launch to draw a point about John McCain:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's.

He goes on to compare Mr. McCain to Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and not to the latter pair's benefit, with a couple of brilliantly turned lines.

The guy is good.