The government is shut down. Or at least something like 17 percent of it is. Big deal. They did the same thing when I was in high school. From what I remember”€”and spending my twenties in near-constant consumption of marijuana and pornography might have dulled my memory a bit, so please correct me if I’m wrong”€”Mad Max-style gangs of punk-rock warriors did not begin roaming the countryside looting gasoline and pillaging everything in sight.

The deafening roar of tumbleweed during one government shutdown and another after a government credit downgrade have left me thoroughly immune to doomsaying. I don’t know much about economics, but I know that how I run my household budget and how the federal shell game works is about as similar as a boar and BMW 3 Series.

Bullshit, like rubella, can be inoculated against, Jenny McCarthy and Rob Schneider notwithstanding. I discovered AM radio at a young age. I’ve been listening to cranks tell people to buy gold (as an aside: really? Shiny metal? Not cigarettes? Clue #1 that these people don’t have Clue #1) and stockpile ammunition for 20 years now, and it’s getting a little old.

From what I can tell, the biggest problem for me is that I can’t go to the NASA website. Other people might have more serious woes. To wit: You’d better hope that your kids don’t go missing during the shutdown. The Amber Alert site is also down.

Apparently Uncle Sam pays for his bandwidth on an hour-to-hour basis.

Unless, of course, it’s one of Dear Leader’s pet projects. If you want to know how much water Michelle Obama wants you to drink, LetsMove.gov is still up. Ditto on HealthCare.gov, the official Ministry of Propaganda website for Obamacare, funding for which is at the center of this dreadfully boring controversy. Comrade Barry has even been able to put out press releases arguing his case to the American people via the Web.

As usual, priorities are exactly where they should be.

Either way, these shenanigans will be over by the end of next week at the latest. The Republicans will buckle like a belt and look like a bunch of Keystone Senators, and in a month no one will remember.

I know, I know: You’re about as interested in another article about the government shutdown as you are reading another theory about the final episode of Breaking Bad. Bear with me. This is where things start getting interesting.

What if I told you that now is the perfect time to get that mistress you’ve been daydreaming about since your wife made you sell the red Corvette ragtop?

It’s a fact. TIME reports that sugar-daddy website activity has spiked during the shutdown as nubile young social science grad students look for ways to supplement their income in ways usually left to the federal government. There’s a lot more women “seeking arrangements,” as in the title of one popular website dedicated to such pursuits. Another, called “What’s Your Price” is bit more direct. The latter looks a little “down market,” so choose carefully.