Spring has truly arrived when I once again find myself in the garden shed with my dog Bingo while pretending to fix the lawn mower. Meaning that I need to clean out the stale gas that I purposefully leave in the tank each fall so my wife will have to ask me to tinker with the mower every spring. Screwing around in the garden shed, pretending to do maintenance only a man is supposed to be capable of, is one of the many ruses that keeps me from having to do actual yard work. I love to watch a woman do yard work, what with the bending over in shorts and all.
At the same time there are less savory views from my shed. For instance, from here I can see through the shrubbery into the neighbors' yards. I can see Big Larry, sitting there on his back deck in his skivvies and flip-flops, fresh from the shower boring the wax out of his ear with what appears to be a house or car key, waiting for his wife Linda to yell: "Dammit Larry get in here put some clothes on! Do you know what you look like? Don’t you ever think?"
Based on what Larry looks like, it's hard to imagine him ever having a thought in his life. And it's even harder to imagine anybody would care if he did. But there are folks who do. Two massive political parties fret endlessly over this portly "swing voter," in the belief that there is some internal logic to the way Larry’s vote moves back and forth between the parties. If you ask Larry, he will say: "I vote the man, not the party." Which is an utter crock, because the truth is that Larry has no idea who he will vote for until he is inside the booth and is forced to pick. And then it usually comes down to which party was the loudest or the most fear mongering during the last five minutes before he went into the voting booth.
There is also a "betting on a winner" sports aesthetic that comes into play. But beyond that Larry and millions of voters like him pay no genuine attention to politics. Zilch. To quote Larry on the matter: "I don't really fucking care." And he will never care until he gets the impression that something, it varies from election to election, has gone waaaaaay too far and things are definitely going to hell in a way that he can see affecting him. Then politics will have his attention. For about one week in November.
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