If you’re looking to take a realistic long-odds bet this weekend, you’d be much better served to place a fiver on John Edwards to win Nevada tomorrow than on anything happening in the NFL. Only a fool would put money on any team to win that wasn’t the Patriots, and even then, the payoff isn’t worth the risk- Randy Moss will in all likelihood be suffering from shingles and hated all throughout America for beating up a woman who made the foolish mistake of being alone with him, and my witchdoctor will have earned her twenty pounds.

No, be smart and place your bets on John Edwards, who is an underdog, but he’s an underdog like Eli Manning is an underdog- not favored to win, no, but he might tear someone’s throat out as he loses. And if you’re successful doing that, then victory can come when it’s least expected. Ask Michael Vick. Betfair.com right now offers 39-1 odds on John Edwards winning the Nevada caucus, which is absurd. Run over there and drop some money on him right now, because he is far too boyishly handsome to deserve such long odds. Especially because it’s Nevada, where anything can happen. They have never had a caucus this early, and any trend-predictors will be totally irrelevant. Anyone who claims to know what will happen is a liar and thinks that you’re a fool, so consider your options. Five on Obama is only good for a £5.60 payoff, and on Hillary you get £3.80- foolish, to say the least. The same bet on Edwards, though, nets you nearly four hundred quid. And he’s hardly out of the running- Nevada is a state full of gamblers, after all, and if I have noticed these foolishly long odds listed, you can bet that the caucus-goers on the strip have done the same, and have every intention of working to see it pay off. A week’s paycheck on Edwards means a year’s salary, and for what? Turning the horse race of American democracy into a literal horse race? Thank god! You’re doing your civic duty if you treat it like a farce.

If you’re not as bold a gambler as all that, McCain is a solid bet, too. He’s polling right now just a few points below Romney, and yet he checks in at nearly 8-1. I don’t think McCain will win, myself, but it’s damn certain to be a more likely outcome than the San Diego Chargers winning the Super Bowl after beating the Patriots, especially with Billy Volek in the driver’s seat, and they’re 8-1 shots, too. At least McCain is from a neighboring state- the Super Bowl will be played in Florida, the span of an entire continent from San Diego. 8-1 odds on McCain right now is a damn foolish thing for a professional gambling website to offer, and I expect that it’s worth taking them up on it.

In other news, I seem to have contracted a pretty terrible computer virus last night. It’s my own fault- it was the middle of the night and I was still awake and my judgment was not what it should have been, so I made some foolish gambles of my own, and decided to trust that an .exe file I downloaded from a torrent site that I usually trust would not be a trojan horse. I lost on that one, and have spent much of today trying to repair the damage. It’s likely I’ll have to give up and reformat, but if anyone knows a whole bunch about computer security and wants to help me run down my problems, feel free to drop me a line and give it a shot.

And it’s four AM again, which means I’ll wait until morning to place those bets on John Edwards and John McCain because, hell, my late-night judgment isn’t all that good. Of course that means that, come morning, the betting will either be closed or the odds will have been reconfigured with Edwards at a reasonable distance behind the two front-runners, but that’s fine, too. After all, he is not particularly likely to win- just better odds than a Lotto ticket, and I play that game, too, sometimes.