Wayne, the wealthy brother-in-law to be, pulled away from the craps table a few moments later and huddled next to him.  Wayne was married to Steph, the bachelor’s soon-to-be-wife’s twin sister.  Steph had the perfect life: no job, living in a mansion, two perfect children.  She had the staggeringly elite country club membership and tennis lessons.  Everyone in the family joked that everything came all too easily to her, and that everything Wayne touched turned to gold.

The bachelor admired that about Wayne, and in his own way, thought that he would ultimately have these same luxuries by marital osmosis.  Or something.

“You know, she wants to be just like Steph,” Wayne said of the bachelor’s future wife.  This came suddenly, out of nowhere.  On the list of things to say given the festive moods, this was like a bee sting.

“Yeah, probably,” the bachelor said, turning to look Wayne in the eye and smiling.

Wayne put a hand on the bachelor’s shoulder.  “No probably.”  He smiled cartoonishly wide.  “Just so you know.”  The smile slowly faded to a plaintive gaze.

“Well yeah.  Who wouldn’t?”  Anxious laughter.

A pause, still looking at each other.  The hand fell away from the shoulder.

“OK then.  Let’s go have a beer.”

“Yeah, OK.”

If the subtexts of life’s events had a voice that grew louder in accordance with their prescience, this one would have screamed.

(Wasn’t this election about the issues this time around?  You know, because there are some big questions in need of answers?)

My thoughts on her debut speech are here, and I think everyone should understand the misrepresentation that she weaved into her rhetoric.  Not that politicians don’t bend the truth from time-to-time, but just because she’s a newcomer woman and has five kids doesn’t mean she’s not held up to the same standards of accountability.

The biggest pass people are giving her is that she’s an attractive woman who tries, and largely succeeds, in identifying with the ‘everywoman’ via motherood, PTA and hockey-mom angles.  That’s great when you’re trying to get elected to the school board, but it shouldn’t fly one bit when we’re talking about VP of the United States.

As y’all have talked about before, this election really is becoming an issue of smart vs. dumb.

That was the deal.  Unspoken and subtly hostile, but a deal nonetheless.  Their future had an agenda, like a meeting or a conference.  Or a trial.

So you’d think on the cold October night just after she moved in, when they were about to sleep in the soon-to-be marital bed, and she told him that if they didn’t fix their sex life then there would be problems down the road, one of them would get the hint.  The ideas of big houses or kids or money or whatever would, just for a moment, take a backseat to the realities of not being connected at all in the way married people need to be, but no, it didn’t.

And that was one of the many red flags that were ignored.  That was how dedicated they were to marching headlong into the icy wind, candles extinguished, propelled by the demons of their upbringings.

(via GF)

Just because you work in what’s perceived to be a dry or conservative industry doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun. 

(via Arbrorath)

Newt Gingrich: 3 Ways to Lower Oil Prices