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John McCain will arrive here in Columbia, Mo., in less than three hours to hold a campaign rally this afternoon. Here’s the weird part, though: he hasn’t announced where he’ll hold the rally.

Let’s bring the timeline up to the present day:

Thursday: McCain spokesperson says that McCain plans to visit Columbia after local police confirm that they’ve been contacted by the Secret Service.

Friday: Missouri Republican Party spokesperson tells The Maneater, a student run paper at the University of Missouri, that “nothing’s planned” for Monday.

Sunday night: The Columbia Tribune says that the visit is unconfirmed. The Columbia Missourian also confirms with the McCain campaign that nothing is confirmed.

Late Sunday night: Time’s The Page publishes McCain’s schedule, including a 2:25 p.m. stop in Columbia. It is unclear whether or not that is Eastern or Central time.

Early Monday: TPM confirms McCain’s scheduled rally time as 2:25 Eastern time.

Monday, 9:30 a.m. Central: The Tribune finally gets confirmation that he’s coming but that “details for the visit have not been hammered out.”

It’s now 9:45 a.m. Central in Columbia. McCain is suppose to arrive at the Columbia airport in 3 hours. Where will he hold the rally? Will anyone know to show up? We’ll know in a few hours.

Maybe.

UPDATE: The Missourian is now reporting the following: “The Republican presidential nominee from Arizona will be landing and making an appearance at the Columbia Regional Airport.” Can that really be all he’s doing in Columbia?

One of my favorite things about Columbia, Mo.: the hot air balloons. In late summer and early fall, they’re out above the city, gliding over the hills to the south of town.

Sometimes, I’ll be driving back home and I’ll pass under a balloon that’s landing on the hill just beyond my house. Those balloons always feel like they’re hanging just a bit too close to the ground when I drive by.

Some of the local balloons are ripped straight from the Re/Max ads. Others, like this monkey balloon that floated by on Friday, are less traditional.

I’m not sure if this is supposed to a famous monkey, but if a giant yellow hat had floated by a few minutes later, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I loved a quote that came across my Google homepage this week. It’s from Clive Barnes, a critic at the New York Post, about television:

“It is the first truly democratic culture, the first culture available to everyone and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.”

And watching a wall of TVs today, sound muted, showing CNN, Fox News, Headline News and MSNBC, it’s tough not to agree with that.

Browsing through the Miami Herald’s interesting new blog — it’s called Poked, and it’s about social networking sites and their use at work — I saw the image above and thought it spoke for all job-hunting collegians. The internet has become a place where dreams of employment are superseded by that time a Bud Light appeared in the background of a photo you were in. In an age where a Presidential candidate was candid about his use of marijuana in the past, I suppose there’s only one inference I can make from this: future employers don’t mind hearing that you went to a few parties in college. They just don’t want to see proof of it.

I’ve been interested in Cuban sports ever since I read S.L. Price’s “Pitching Around Fidel” a few years back. I got further into the country’s history when I got to write a bit about Livan Hernandez, one of the island’s most famous defectors.

But until I read today’s story in The Washington Post about a Cuban soccer player defecting, I never knew this about Cuban teams that play outside of the country:

After Thursday’s training session in Washington, the team returned to the hotel and the players reported to their rooms. The telephones had been removed by Cuban officials, a standard practice to discourage players from communicating with outsiders on foreign trips.

How must it feel to travel to the modern world and be insulated by your government from the 21st century? I can’t even imagine.

The White House is honoring Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi tonight, and the guest list reads like a cross between Fat Tony’s known associates and the nightly specials at Olive Garden. It seems like anyone with an Italian last name is invited tonight, and I mean anyone. Among those on the guest list: Washington Redskins general manager Vinny Cerrato. How else to explain how a guy who could’ve been fired months ago is getting a White House invite?

“Saturday Night Live” is getting good press recently for its parodies of the presidential and vice presidential candidates — okay, well, really just of Sarah Palin — and it got me thinking about the best “SNL” political sketches of all time. The 2000 debates have to be considered, but for my money, it doesn’t get much better than Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton stopping by a D.C. McDonald’s.

Enjoy:

So this story came across my laptop tonight:

Clint Malarchuk, the former NHL goalie best known for having his jugular vein slashed by a skate in a 1989 game with Buffalo, is recovering after accidentally shooting himself in the chin with a rifle.

Wife Christy told sheriff’s deputies that the .22-caliber rifle discharged after her husband placed the butt on the ground between his legs. He had been shooting rabbits.

After reading that to my roommate, his first comment was not, “What an idiot!” or “He did what?” No, his first comment was: “A .22-caliber? That’s his first mistake. He should be using a shotgun to shoot rabbits.”

Mid-Missouri: where irony comes to die.

Maybe it’s just because I spent the summer pointing out the unusual and sometimes subliminal advertising during the Beijing Olympics, but when I saw this Getty Images photo on the front page of washingtonpost.com last night, I had only one question: did Kodak sponsor last night’s debate? Because I can’t remember seeing four people with non-digital cameras in the same place since…. well, probably the Clinton presidency. Kodak had at least some role in the first debate, but to whomever passed out those point-and-shoots last night in Nashville, well done.

Today’s “Pearls Before Swine” reminded me that somewhere in the world, someone is always claiming that a politician is plagiarizing something.