Bits and pieces

So I've caught up on my beauty sleep, and I'm finding in the three days I was on the road and focused on my day job, all sorts of nutty things have happened.

When the cat's away...

I'm not the cat, but you get me.

Anywho:

• My pond - Speaking of being away and mice playing and what not, I have a habit of checking my pond about three times a day - once to feed my koi, and twice to check for tadpoles. I always know when the evil, (literally) poison, Bufo toads, have laid eggs, 'cause they're noisy lovers the night before. Every now and then I get teased for my vigilance. So get this, I leave home on Friday. I'm away Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I come home, and what do you think I find in my pond besides huge fish? About 15,000 toad eggs and tiny tadpoles. The fish are pissed off. I can't blame them. It's like a black cloud swimming in there. This is going to take some work.
• The Vatican's new deadly sins - After 1,500 years the Catholic Church has updated and added to its deadly sin list. The new ones are environmental pollution, genetic engineering, being filthy rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia, and causing social injustice. Based on the pollution sin alone, half my neighborhood is going to Hell, especially those knuckleheads who toss their food wrappers and empty beer cans in the street and let their dogs pollute the swale in front of my house. And the drug dealer one makes a lot of sense to me too. You have got to be a selfish person to push poison on vulnerable people and justify it by arguing they want it and someone has to give it to them so it may as well be you, or arguing that you have to pay your bills and feed your family. Bad excuses. Get two jobs or three if you have to, real jobs, not sidewalk pharmacy. Not sure what I think about the super duper rich sin. I admit I'm scornful of most obscenely rich people, but that's because the hater in me is just a little jealous of the fact that paying bills and living with money stress never a worry for them. But if they earned it honestly, I don't see what the problem is. I don't think I even have to the explain why I'm all for pedophilia being on this list. I'm leaving genetic engineering and abortion alone. But I'd be curious for a little more definition on the social injustice sin.
• Eliot Spitzer - It's funny. A buddy and I were talking yesterday about the things apparently smart people will do to ruin their lives. Hooking up with hos was one of those things. And by the way, guys, if you do business with a prostitute, like Ludacris said - and I'm paraphrasing - you're a ho too. So how could a man who built his career on law and order and strict enforcement, a man who was nicknamed "Eliot Ness" after the prohibition-era G-Man, be so dumb as to purchase a prostitute? And not just get a prostitute but get one from a Web site? It was wrong, no doubt. But even if Spitzer didn't take issue with his "sin," anybody who watches TV knows high end prostitutes keep records of who, what, when, where, how much, etc. A rising career, and more importantly an intact family ruined. I am curious about one thing though: What in the world were guys like Spitzer buying for $1,000 to $5,000 an hour or $10,000 a day? If I paid that kind of money, I wouldn't want sex. I'd want my house painted inside and out, a few new trees planted in my yard, maybe some sod laid down on a few bare spots in the yard, and if there was time left over at the end of the day she could wash my car...and if she wanted to look sexy while doing the chores I suppose that'd be OK.
• Day job stuff - here is an article I had in yesterday's paper. Enjoy, if you have time. It's a profile of an interesting lady.

Senator Vitter

Where to begin, where to begin.

Are you familiar with the name Vitter? If not, Vitter is a Louisiana senator who recently admitted that his phone number was found in the so-called black book of the D.C. madam because several years ago he apparently paid for sex with one of the madam's "escorts."

Everyone makes mistakes. But Vitter shot himself in the foot by crying from the mountain tops over the years that the sanctity of marriage and the strength of traditional family "operations" were crucial to the strength and development and character and moral fiber of the United States. He made those positions an integral part of his political personality. And then he went out and hired at least one hooker.

Here's the thing. I don't care what political party Vitter belongs to. It really doesn't matter to me that he's a Republican. Plenty of Democrats have had affairs over the years.

You're going to think I'm being frivolous, but what I'm more curious about is why Vitter paid for it. It.

I know that in theory we all pay for it. Women, as your romantic relationship with a new guy develops from caution to passion, you pay by patiently spending countless hours either listening to him talk about guy things and his job, watching him ignore you (and pretend not to) while you talk, or watching (and pretending not to see) his primate-like qualities, like butt-scratching, "other" scratching, belching, etc. And guys, you pay by patiently spending countless hours listening to her talk about girl things and her job, watching her obsess over "the little stuff" like a hair being out of place or an outfit not being quite right. You both pay by buying him or her gifts, meant to please them, and if you think about it, meant to ingratiate yourself to them.

So I get it. We pay.

But literally paying cash for it? That's a different story. Vitter's not a bad looking guy. Does he really have to pay cash? I notice on old reruns of Cops or in the occasional - lately sort of freqent - news reports about prominent figures getting caught in prostitution stings it's always a decent-looking guy who seems like he'd have game who gets busted.

Why? Seriously, getting a prostitute is not easy. I've heard/seen those guys explain after the fact that they did it because it was easy to arrange - a simple exchange of money for a service.

That's a crock. I don't know that because I've tried to hire a hooker. I haven't. I wouldn't. Aside from that whole loving my wife thing, I'm much too cheap to offer cash for it.

But having covered crime as a reporter, and having met my share of Johns and hookers while lurking in the shadows of cops on the street, I'm telling you hiring such an "employee" ain't that easy. Unless you're in Vegas or something where the prostitutes get all dressed up and trawl the casino floors looking for suckers, you have to go and find them. You have to go to a crappy neighborhood and look for them the same way you might go looking for illegal drugs. You can put your life in jeopardy looking in the wrong place, all for a few dollars and few minutes worth of intimacy. The danger exception might be what Vitter did - hiring a temporary sack friend from an escort service. Even then, you don't know the background of the person coming to meet you at your hotel room, or your office, or wherever. She/he could be a serial killer, who chops up Johns.

Sorry, the jokes about it being easy can't be right. I've seen too much to the contrary.

In the mean time, I hope Vitter gets it together. Whether in the Senate or not, I don't care. He doesn't represent my district. And if the good folks of Louisiana want him to rep their set, more power to 'em. I hope his kids aren't too traumatized. And I hope his wife learns a valuable lesson about the looooooooooooooooong "memory" of videotape - she was caught on tape several years back joking about Bill and Hillary Clinton RE Monica Lewinski that if her husband, Vitter, cheated on her she wouldn't forgive/embrace him, she'd turn into Lorena Bobbitt (the woman who chopped off her allegedly abusive husband's penis) on him - and from here on out takes a "there but for the grace of God" attitude about other people's human shortcomings.