Another typical January in Texas; the lukewarm pablum of mid-70's and partly-cloudy skies ahead of the Manitoban winds which will invariably whip down from Canada reminding us why it is still, technically, winter. The sweater box is not far from hand. But today is a perfect day for tattersall and Didionesque complex sentences requiring no less than four or five commas, appositives, semicolons and other meaningful punctuation marks which make English teachers salivate.
We are in the season of unseasonableness. Weather and politics can turn on a dime, and if last night's South Carolina primary shows us anything, it's that the inevitable can quickly become the evitable in just one short 24-hour news cycle.
Like with Rick Santorum's much vaunted sweater vests, one day you're in and the next you're out. (Heidi Klum's marriage notwithstanding.)
Politics and fashion are strange bedfellows that rely on the fickleness of a shopping electorate who find themselves continually shopping for candidates. Take, for example, the liberal left. The conservative right. The Tea Party. The Libertarians, the Greens, the Occupiers. There also seems to be, if the news is to be trusted, a wide swath down the middle of Undecideds with whom I have never had any truck. They remind me of the people who can't make up their minds where to eat and end up choosing some establishment out of gustatory convenience, all the while complaining about the choice with a fork to their lips as if it were a gun to their heads.
Who constitutes these small percentages that aren't able to decisively lock down one candidate when Gallup calls, or who can go into voting booth not knowing who they will pull the lever for or darken the oval? Have the contrasts blurred so much that one choice seems as good as another?
Bare arms, my friends. The choices should be as clear as the weather. Or at least as easy as shopping for clothes hanging side-by-side on a rack. As with the Texas climate, change is something you can always believe in, and acrylic will never substitute for cashmere.
Never.
