I’m in the wrong line of work. I need to be in a business like automobile insurance, where if you don’t buy any, you can get arrested. Now that’s job security.
There sure would be a lot fewer wars if the old men who started them had to fight them.
In the last few months, my local news has informed me that my family and children are in danger from tomatoes, mold, mosquitoes, ants, spinach, unsafe school buses, flesh-eating bacteria, sexual predators, the Internet, household cleaning chemicals, off-balance televisions, sugar, school lunches, soft drinks, energy drinks, obesity, ozone, ultraviolet rays, herbal supplements, unlicensed valet parkers, hurricanes, flooding, lightning, carbon monoxide, debris on the highways, uninsured drivers, foreign drivers and trucks with bad brakes. And to think that when I was a child all we had to worry about was nuclear annihilation. How did people survive without having television to keep them in a state of constant fear?
Ever get the feeling that every now and then some researcher at a drug company comes up with a new drug, and then somebody has to invent a disease to go with it?
There are 77 registered lobbyists in Washington for each and every one of the 535 members of the House and Senate. Do any of them work for you? Didn’t think so.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have air conditioning. We opened windows, had screen doors and let the outside air flow through the house. It was hot, but we survived. Now we have air conditioning and the houses are built differently. Fewer functioning windows and less air flow. More artificial lights to make up for the lack of natural outside light. A large part of our electric bill is due to air conditioning, so our houses are insulated and sealed tightly to save electricity. So now we have stale air, mold, sick building syndrome and bad indoor air quality. We’re fat and sick because we don’t sweat and our homes are like fortresses. I’m not convinced that was a smart trade.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not we are ready for a woman president, or a black president. I don’t think those things really matter in the long run. I just know we’re ready for a really good president. It’s been a while.
After watching the circus of sound bites coming from the pulpits during the Presidential campaign, I realize yet again how wise the framers of our constitution were in instituting a separation between church and state. It not only keeps religion from interfering with the government, it keeps the government from interfering with religion. Plus, it keeps the whackos on both sides from working together against the rest of us.
How come there’s not a special interest group for people who don’t need special interest groups?
When I was 18 I had a driver’s license, a Social Security card, a car key, and a key to my dorm room. Today, I have twenty assorted passwords, seven different PIN numbers, five door keys, four car keys, a mailbox key, five forms of identification, two major credit cards, an ATM card, a passport, two video store ID’s, a Sam’s Club ID, an AARP card, three other membership cards, a voter ID, five e-mail addresses, three different phone numbers, seven remote controls, two swipe cards, two alarm codes and a blood donor card. Progress.
I still miss John Lennon. It would have been wonderful to have his perspective, his influence and his music with us during the last 30 years.
I was born in 1946, which means I turned 62 this year. Even though I am 62 in calendar years, I am actually a lot younger. How does that happen? Well firstly, I sent 5 years back for credit. They were defective. They sucked. In fact they sucked so badly that even though I had to live through them, I certainly shouldn’t have to count them. Doesn’t seem fair. I mean, there ought to be some sort of warranty on such things. That brings me down to 57. That’s more like it. Plus, I’m even younger if you consider that 57 is actually 48 metric.
Ever wonder what type of spam the President gets? “Enlarge your Administration safely in the privacy of your home.” “Refinance the National Debt! No credit check. Easy Terms! Nobody will be turned down!” “Hot college coeds are waiting to support your candidacy.” “Winning Election Notification! Your name has been selected as the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election.”
The taste buds that register bitterness are concentrated on the back of our tongue, to keep us from swallowing potentially poisonous substances. There are no such safeguards on our eyes or ears. Nobody in their right mind would deliberately eat something that would poison them. But for some reason many of us have no qualms about allowing huge amounts of mental, emotional and spiritual poison to enter our bodies every day. Violence, hate, prejudice, greed, envy, lust, lack of control, hopelessness and many other forms of poison enter our bodies every day from television, newspapers, advertisements and sadly, many of our friends, family members and acquaintances. The result is the poisoning of even our own thoughts. These stimuli are food just as much as the things we eat with our mouth and the air we breathe. What do they grow inside us? Fear, depression, cynicism, anger, frustration, despair. Like the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out. Cutting back on negativity is a diet that would help us all.
Leave it to my generation to turn something that used to be fun into something un-fun. And not only not fun, but competitive, serious, elitist and expensive. I’m talking about riding a simple bicycle, though it’s not so simple today. Used to be you just jumped on your bike and took off down the street. Not any more. Now you have to have special $2000 15 lb custom made composite bicycles, spandex clothes, goofy foam helmets, special gloves, special shoes, and apparently a herd of other people to ride with. Of course you don’t see any of them because you spend your time hunched over the handle bars of your bike staring at your front tire, or the spandex-covered butt crack of the person in front of you. You don’t get to see any of the scenery, or enjoy the fresh air because you have to hurry and finish so you can hurry home and hurry to do the other ten things you have scheduled for that day.
You know, I wish the parents of the kids today would just leave them the Hell alone. Used to be I looked forward to summer vacation or weekends so I could play. Not today. No….our kids have their time scheduled for them like CEO’s. Karate lessons, dance lessons, study camps, baseball, soccer, computer camps. They even have “play dates” with other kids. It’s sick. When I was a kid I was sent outside in the morning and told to stay outside until lunch. If I complained about being bored, I was assigned a job to do like cleaning or raking the yard. Your creativity kicks in when you are not regimented and led around like cattle. It’s not the adult’s job to orchestrate and supervise their children’s lives. It’s no wonder our kids are nihilistic and arrogant. They live in a gigantic corporate yuppie boot camp run by adults. Leave them alone.
IT drones are the new power elite. They control access to information and routes of communication. This is done by a new social class of nerds with suspect social skills, worker-bee mentalities and absolutely no understanding of how much impact they have on employee morale or productivity.
What happens to all those lost key strokes? You know the ones. When you start typing and your cursor is in the wrong place and nothing happens. Or when you’re typing in an internet address and the letters just *vanish* into cyberworld. I suspect there’s an alternate reality somewhere with billions of letters, numbers and punctuation marks just lying around. If we ever run out, we’ll know where to go for spares.
You can tell we have way too many cable channels when there are hour long commercials, reruns of old game shows and televised radio broadcasts.
