We begin this week with a story that's sure to delight. We hope that when, five months from now, you read in a Dave Barry column that several hundred alert readers have sent him this story, you'll remember that you saw it here first. Also, we hope you'll forget that this column consists entirely of comic conceits lifted directly from Mr. Barry's work.

The story involves researchers Joel Berger and his wife, Carol Cunningham, whose work involves, quote, "throwing balls of dung and snowballs saturated with urine" at their subject. When this didn't work, they tried slingshots, but "we couldn't get the distance or the right slingshot to handle the volume." Unable to get close to the object of their study, they finally engaged a designer from Star Wars to create a moose suit. Once in the suit, they were sufficiently interesting that they could come nose-to-nose to their quarry, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).

Moose suits are not the only good way to get information about politicians, however. For example, TV, which gives us so much and asks us for so little, has lots of solid information. We at MWC are extremely qualified to sort out this information, by which we mean we often have more televisions on than there are people in the house. For that reason, we are bringing you the first-ever MWC Election Special, your source for all the facts you'll need on Tuesday. By the time you're done reading this, you'll be prepared to make the informed decision of whether to stay home and watch reruns of "CHiPs" on USA or to stay home and watch reruns of the "CHiPs '99" reunion on TNT.

No, seriously, go out and vote on Tuesday. It'll make you feel like you live in a participatory democracy. You can comfort yourself with the belief that your choice of a Republican or Democrat will have an impact on life in our country. Surely your vote will have more influence than the identical large sums of money given to each candidate by large companies and entire industries.

Okay, enough cynicism. We do happen to think there are a few races of some significance. Not the one involving Dick Armey, of course. This one is already over, although the rumor that there's a county of 240,000 people for which his brother-in-law is the clerk, and that it has already registered 1.2 million absentee ballots, is without substantiation of any kind.

So what can TV tell us about the races that mean something? Well, we start in Illinois with the U.S. Senate race. Independently wealthy candidate Peter Fitzgerald has conducted his self-financed campaign from within the electrified walls of upscale Chicago suburb Inverness. It's convenient that the MWC staff gets all our information from TV, because that's the only place Fitzgerald ever appears. (There is speculation that this is because only TV makeup is thick enough to cover the mark of Cain on his ample forehead, but we view such rumor-mongering as irresponsible, so we don't want to hear any more of that.) From his home, Fitzgerald can easily deliver his message, which seems to be:

1. His opponent is Carol Moseley-Braun, a black woman.
2. He is neither Carol Moseley-Braun nor a black woman.
3. Also (these are documented positions), the federal government should spend no money on education, and women who have been raped should not be allowed to get abortions.

In all seriousness, there are some good reasons not to vote for Moseley-Braun. If you are convinced by them, then don't vote for her. But don't make that a reason to vote for Fitzgerald. Just don't vote in that race. Further, we think if you haven't informed yourself about any given race, you have no business voting in it. That's how Lyndon LaRouche disciples get on the ballot.

We stay in Illinois for the gubernatorial race. First, let us mention that we have no connection whatsoever with the Glenn Poshard campaign, and nothing from us should in any way be construed as endorsed by the members thereof. That said, isn't George Ryan an unbelievable [extremely offensive phrase]? Let's be clear about his time as Secretary of State. The only real thing he needed to do was to ensure that the people who get licenses to drive are qualified. So what happened? Well, people in the DMV hierarchy took bribes to give commercial licenses to people who didn't pass the test. Then one of these people caused an accident that killed several adults and children.

So to say that Ryan is a baby-killer would be uncharitable. To say that in the mean time, he spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to send magnets with his name on them to Illinois senior citizens would be, on the other hand, quite accurate. To say that DMV employees have been told for years by supervisors that they had to sell fund-raising tickets to support Ryan's campaign would also be accurate. To say that Ryan would continue his political practices as governor is a matter of opinion, but it seems reasonable. It's nice to know, though, that all the state money he's spent on his own behalf is at least in part offset by the $1.5 million in staffing allowances returned by Poshard to the U.S. government over his 10 years in Congress.

We move finally to North Carolina, the location of the other major concentration of MWC subscribers (Defn: People too busy to ask us to take them off this silly little list), where Senator Lauch Faircloth is running for reelection. We don't know too much about his opponent, wealthy personal injury lawyer John Edwards, but we can give you the following situations in which to vote for Faircloth:

• You are a high-ranking executive in one of the insurance companies in whose pocket Faircloth lives.
• You make your living researching the Pfiesteria outbreaks that occur with alarming frequency in North Carolina's rivers. Without big hog farms like Faircloth's allowing regular breaches of lagoons and spilling hog nutrients into North Carolina waterways, this toxic dinoflagellate responsible for killing millions of fish every year couldn't thrive. (For the uninitiated, "nutrients" are delicately defined as the stuff that goes into the hogs but does not directly result in increased hog weight.)
• Also, it helps if you are white, straight, and male, but don't feel obligated to vote for him purely because you meet those demographic criteria.