| |
Stuff I Don’t Need to Know
by Peary Perry | |
Today
the United States Post Office announced another two cent rate increase. Now postage
is going to cost us at least .46 per envelope. This is to offset a estimated 7
billion dollar deficient for the coming year. My question is….why don’t they just
go ahead and make it .50 and then they might stop increasing the rates almost
annually? We all know they can never be profitable and will never be able to operate
without a subsidy every year. Just get it over with and leave us alone for a year
or so. No one uses the mail anymore anyway except for politicians and the Crate
and Barrel catalog people. I could do without those without any problem.
Enough about the good old USPS, I’ll get more next January when my annual rant
comes out.
This week I’d like to focus our attention on things that we
are told but cannot do anything about. My question is….why are we told in the
first place? Do we care or do we want to care?
For example the other day
I was reading that the earth’s axis had shifted about 3 inches as a result of
earthquakes. This also had an effect upon the length of a day and our time had
been shortened by about 1.27 microseconds. If you are like me, I’m certain this
news is going to ruin your day. Just think about it for a second….on the other
hand forget what I told you, who cares? It isn’t like you and I will lose any
sleep over this information. What I’d like to know is just who tracks this kind
of stuff and why? Did someone go to school to become an expert on the position
of the center of the earth? Who would hire anyone for this and what would they
get paid? Better yet, why would they get paid? Why is this important to anyone?
On the other hand we have the daily Toyota recall information. Or perhaps I should
say the daily auto recall information for just about any make and model automobile.
In my opinion you’d be better off driving a used anything than a new something.
It seems to be brakes today and engines yesterday. You could spend most of your
waking life driving back and forth to the dealer just to get the necessary repairs.
You must also take into consideration that the days are getting shorter as I mentioned
earlier, so you don’t have as much time to waste on repairs. Think about it.
Got
a cell phone? I’ll give you something to think about. Try tumors for your brain.
Do cell phones cause tumors? Who knows? It seems they do in mice, but I have a
hard time visualizing mice making many cell phone calls. Who could they call and
what would they talk about if they could call? These are the things we don’t need
in our brains.
So, is coffee good for us or bad for us? One day it’s good
and the next day it’s terrible. I drink it anyway and so that probably puts me
in the rebel category, but than again I use a cell phone so I guess my life is
going downhill in a hurry. As far as global warming, I’m all for it. Or maybe
I’m against it…I can’t seem to remember from one day to the next which way I should
position myself. I do know that I have cut back on my carbon footprint by making
sun tea instead of using the stove. I tried baking biscuits on the hood of my
car, but I found it took more than four hours and I was missing a lot of work.
So much for that idea.
Don’t even get me started about microwaves, you
can find over 200,000 articles about their dangers or safety. I just know that
I should not put live things inside of them and don’t stand in front of them for
hours at a time. I figure that’s being cautious enough. Of course I don’t stand
in front of anything for hours at a time, so that’s not much of a stretch for
me.
If you are in your twenties, then I guess it’s ok to worry about these
things, but after you get to be my age you start to consider all of that useless
information you have put into your brain over the past years and wonder if you
have very much room left for any new stuff. Personally I think anything relating
to the post office or the location of the earth’s axis falls in the category of
stuff I don’t need to know about. I can’t do anything about either one, nor can
you.
© Peary Perry
Letters
From North America -
July 7, 2010 column
Syndicated weekly in 80 newspapers
Comments go to pperry@austin.rr.com |
| Books
by Peary Perry - Order Now | |
|
