Neanderpundit

First of all, I’m not interested in the details of Mark Sanford’s sex scandal.

Second: I’m not too proud of anyone who acts this way. I don’t want someone who will betray their relationship having the reins of power.

However

I know this happens. I know this happens a lot. And I have this to say:

Shut the fuck up, sanford. No, really, shut the fuck up.

All across America, in fact the world, guys are stepping out on their wives, wives stepping out on thier husbands. I don’t know their motivations and I don’t care. They do so discreetly. They do so in conjunction with already planned business trips. They have legitimate reasons not to be home that no living soul would suspect are ulterior. They do not tell anyone. They keep the “secret” even from the object of their clandestine affection until the moment of the assignation. They don’t discuss it, they don’t think about it, they don’t go out of their way to do it. If it doesn’t fall naturally into the rythm of their lives they don’t do it. And they don’t run around crying about it.

That rock solid guy you work with? Tuesdays, in summer, after golf, he gets a hummer in the car from a woman he met on the course. It’s been going on for twelve years, and will probably continue until he can’t get it up anymore. That receptionist with the bad hair and nice smile? She goes on vacation every year with the “girls” but gets her own room “because I snore so loud” and spends all night with a cabana boy. Sometimes she even takes her nice smile out and gives him a special treat. And for twenty three years, each year it has been a different cabana boy, and each year her friends wonder why she’s so tired all the time, and nobody is the wiser. That dazzling urbanite with the full social calendar? She brings her husband to her boyfriend’s house. His wife gets a headache and goes to bed, her husband drinks until he sees pink elephants, and the two of them have sex on the pool table in the rec room.

These are all members of MY FAMILY. I bet a few members of your family are the same, and you’ll never know it for a second. Because most people can keep their mouths shut. And I don’t give a damn. If you want to damage your reputation before the Creator, it’s your business. Shut the hell up.

Got thirty seconds of mist this morning. My water bill is gonna suck.

I love people who complain about the weather in texas, or florida. You want hardy motherfuckers? Come to the midwest. The lake effect dumps tons of snow, and we have winters that can get down into the -30 temps. The cold grips you like a vise, and you won’t see shit until spring, and due to the effects of global warming, spring is in JUNE. When summer finally hits. the only word to describe it is “oppressive”. jean Shepherd described indiana summers as “a 500 lb woman sitting on a camp stool” which just about does it, weighty, damp, oppressive. You sweat like a pig walking from your air conditioned office to your air conditioned car, and if you want to work outside or play outside make damned sure you have a garden hose, those pussy little quart bottles of Gatorade ain’t gonna help your ass at all.

When I was in Zambia we saw people dropping off from the heat left and right. “Oh, it is so hot! Everyone is suffering!” it was eighty degrees. EIGHTY!! And practically no humidity.

Texas in the summer is hot. But the temperature extremes are what, maybe a couple days a year it gets to 40 degrees? California almost never has days where you couldn’t, if you wanted, sleep outdoors. Florida gets plenty humid but never cold to contrast it- it’s either horribly humid or it’s pretty nice.

In Indiana, if the pretty nice day falls on a weekend, we have a picnic.

yeah, yeah, I know there are a lot of other places that get extremes of temperature, but when you combine the 100 degree plus spread of temperatures you experience in the course of ANY NORMAL YEAR, and the mind-sucking horror of the commute you must make unless you live at work, and the soul destroying political climate of the Chicagoland/Northwest Indiana region, this is the toughest place to live I know. Throw in a couple random shootings, as you regularly get in Chicago, and it’s probably statistically safer in Kuwait.