Fuzzy says I get points for not throwing anything at the television during the first presidential debate last night. It helped that I was watching the twitter feed and laughing at the snarky comments being made.

We started watching on NBC, then moved to CNN because, just as my stepfather likes to watch the clothes spin round in the washer, Fuzzy likes to watch the wavy lines of the response graphs. May I just say that Christiane Amanpour gets more and more beautiful with every year? I so want to be her when I grow up.

I’m not going to quote any of the responses. As debates go, this one didn’t seem to be all that special, and I maintain that it was a draw, and unlikely to have changed the mind of anyone who’d already decided where their vote was going before watching.

But:

McCain’s choice not to look Obama directly in the eye, or address comments TO him, even when being urged to by Jim Lehrer? = BAD.

Obama’s use of McCain and Lehrer’s first names when speaking TO them? = GOOD.

And Obama gets points from the language geek part of my personality not just for pronouncing Pakistan correctly, but also for pronouncing Iran and Iraq with the proper vowel tones. As for McCain, he seriously needs a refresher course in subject-verb agreement.