OK, so... for my daughter's 7th birthday my wife and I fulfilled our "you can get a pet" promise and bought her two male hamsters. But there's a funny thing about hamster math. See, one male hamster plus one male hamster equals... two adult hamsters and five squirmy baby hamsters... which is the moment you realize that the dudes at the pet store know almost nothing about hamster vaginas.
Suddenly we had 7 hamsters (until the the whole thing happened again and we ended up with 12) and we gave some away and we kept some and all was well.
Until Stripey died.
Stripey was one of the original Fathers turned Mother Hamsters and HER passing was the first foray into death in our family.
There was a lot of crying and talking and a decision was made that we were going to transport her to the little house we have up in Ojai, CA where we would bury her.
So, we wrapped her body in a paper towel, put her in a tupperware container, drove her up north and... because it was raining the day we got there... put her in the freezer, awaiting a precipitation-free afternoon for a funeral.
Then... we sorta forgot she was there.
Jump ahead six months, when our good friends ask if they can borrow the house for a weekend. SURE we say. Go. Enjoy. Chill out.
So go they went.
And enjoy they stared.
And chilling out... was very much on so the menu.
And the second night they were there... husband friend thinks... "Y'know what would make this more Chillachios? A little cannabis."
So husband friend starts poking around the house, looking to see if we had anything smokable, and after a frustrating search... he opens freezer.
And there is it.
The tupperware container with SomethingClearlyWonderful wrapped in paper towel.
"This," husband friend thinks, "is going to be... the shizat."
So, he pops the top, starts to unwrap... and in this moment... to his marrow... he KNOWS he is moments away from relaxation and satisfaction...
...which is when he is presented with the matted, frozen carcass of a dead rodent.
Needless to say, this did not fulfill his expectations.
In fact, what he found... was the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he'd hoped for.
Instead of a path to a quiet mind, he got a stark reminder that life is short and what follows is (likely) little more than bones and skin and a stiff slack mouth.
I tell this tale, because I believe husband friend's experience is pretty much EXACTLY what Republicans must be feeling right this second.
The Goopers left the 2010 midterms... looked to the 2012 Presidential elections... and thought, "This is going to be the shizat," but upon unwrapping what they've found in their freezer they've come to realize... it's Mitt "Dead Hamster" Romney.
His matted fur is crusted over with 10,000 different positions on whether or not its raining outside and his blank eyes tell them that there isn't a conviction he wouldn't trade for three votes and an endorsement.
They are NOT relaxed and they know they're not going to get any satisfaction.
And like with dead pets, they now see that the result of close to a decade of anger as a policy and power as the only goal leads a kind of political death that even a freezer can't keep from decaying in front of their eyes.