Here’s what I’lI be doing this weekend: Trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do when I finally have my ballot in front of me.

I’m an honest to God “undecided” right now. On one hand there’s the aged jet jockey who alarmingly approaches governance with the same swooping, crazy, seat-of-the-pants style that served him well as a fighter pilot, right up until the moment a missile took him down. On the other hand there’s the untested greenhorn whose single greatest accomplishment in this campaign has been to promise both tax cuts and hundreds of billions in more spending — and not be laughed off the stage. Standing in the wings are a cranky conservative-turned-libertarian, and a once-respected consumer activist who’s turned himself into a joke candidate by having his name on various ballots in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 — thus making a serious run at Harold Stassen’s record of futility.

I have voted in every presidential election since 1972. This is the first time I’ve ever been stumped by the choices before me. I suddenly understand why some people simply sit out the election, and let others make the call. I won’t do that, because I want to preserve my right to second-guess the next president on a daily basis, and I need to vote in order to have the moral authority to do so. But every choice feels wrong, for different reasons. I don’t lean toward anyone — only away.

I envy those of you who are convinced of the absolute rightness of your chosen candidate. I think you’re deluded, not to mention willfully blind to his undeniable (and scary) shortcomings — but at least you’re doing something fun this weekend.

I had lunch the other day with a pal who’s in the news business, and we spent most of our time hashing over the sorry state of the industry. At one point I predicted that in 2009 a big daily paper somewhere would close down, and that another would become a trailblazer by announcing it would no longer print a Monday paper, opting instead for an online edition only.

When I returned home after lunch, I discovered I’d gotten one detail wrong. Turns out The Christian Science Monitor announced the very same day that it will go exclusively to online editions in 2009 — not just on Mondays, but every weekday. Its weekend paper will still be printed, albeit as a magazine-style offering.

I think that announcement offers a peek into the future. The number of newspapers publishing printed editions seven days a week will be reduced to a handful much more quickly than you think. My friend already wonders why the Raleigh News & Observer, the newspaper she’s read all her life, even bothers with a Monday edition anymore. She’s right: It’s thin and flimsy, with almost nothing to make it worth fetching off the sidewalk.

But any newspaper executive these days is like a cartoon character standing on an ice floe that has suddenly cleaved itself in two, leaving him with a foot on each half as they slowly drift apart, paralyzed by indecision because he doesn’t know which way to jump. Publishing and delivering a print edition is an expensive proposition, and advertising revenue is fading fast (as is circulation). The executive knows that’s not the ice floe to go with — but something like 90 percent of the industry’s income still comes from the print edition. The other floe is the better long-term bet, but for the moment it’s not big enough to keep him above water.

That’s why a game-changing step is in order right now. The N&O, or another paper somewhere with an equally limp Monday edition (which is to say, just about every other paper in America), should sacrifice that day’s paper as a tentative step toward the future. Eliminating that edition will save newsprint costs (typically the second-highest expenditure on the balance sheet, after payroll) and distribution costs. Also, staff could be reduced. Sure, the advertising revenue from that edition would evaporate, but it’s not much in the first place and there’s a good chance some of it would simply shift to another day rather than disappear altogether. The ultimate goal would be to find the right mix of printed editions and online-only editions, á la the Christian Science Monitor — maybe having an actual newspaper on ad-heavy Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, for instance, and online editions the rest of the week.

The race-against-the-clock alternative — which almost all newspaper executives seem to favor — is to stick with their cost-intensive, seven-day print editions until the Internet hopefully becomes the cash cow their publishing operations once were.

Under that strategy, the first half of my prediction for 2009 may well come true.

Remember that piece I wrote on May 9, 2006 about BB&T, the North Carolina banking company? Disregard it.

It’s no problem if you don’t remember. I had to look it up myself. It was a column for the Raleigh News & Observer, in which I sang BB&T’s praises for declaring that it would not finance any commercial development of land seized by eminent domain under the U.S. Supreme Court’s godforsaken decision in Kelo v. City of New London. (You can save me the trouble of rehashing the whole issue by simply reading that column, which you’ll find here.)

All the air went out of my balloon of admiration for BB&T when I learned yesterday that it was getting $3.1 billion of federal government bailout money. BB&T is well-capitalized and certainly doesn’t need bailing out; in fact, its own spokesman pointed out, “We are probably one of the healthiest banks in the U.S.” But it’s taking the federal investment anyway — and is considering using it to buy other banks to expand its market share.

Let me make sure you understand: BB&T, untroubled and thriving, is taking our tax dollars meant to invigorate the economy and thinking about using it to finance its growth. That’s where a big slice of your bailout money is going — to a perfectly healthy bank which already has plenty of money to lend.

Wait. It gets worse. BB&T is headed by a fellow named John Allison, who is so great an acolyte of free-market philosopher Ayn Rand that he offered millions of dollars to colleges which agreed to make her landmark novel “Atlas Shrugged” required reading for some of their business students. Allison also requires his bank managers to read it. Yet here he is, essentially selling a chunk of his bank (the feds will get shares of BB&T preferred stock in return for the investment) to the very government he is philosophically inclined to keep at arm’s length.

Now we know the price of Allison’s convictions: $3.1 billion.