A Wondering We Go

I often wonder if other people wonder about so many different things like I do on any given day. How bad is it? Well, here are just a few musings from my personal wonderland of late:

I wonder … how much money AT&T and Charter waste on my mailing address alone each month? A week hasn’t gone by for as long as I can remember that I don’t receive two or three solicitations in the mail for this U-verse bundle or that Charter package. Here’s an idea – why not bundle up the cost of wasted paper and postage and have these relentless marketers subtract it from my monthly bill?

I wonder … why the price of gas jumps up by three or four cents a gallon overnight, but when it goes down, it’s more like seven-tenths of one cent over a week or longer. The least the oil refiners could do is buy us dinner first.

I wonder … why left-leaning pundits and professors are quick to say that all cultures and faiths are equally important and have something to offer. And yet, these same counter-culture educators, protestors, peaceniks, alternative lifestylers and other aggressively anti-conservative activists would be the first ones on a long list of people and groups to be silenced and locked up (or worse) if those same supposedly egalitarian cultures and/or religions ever establish a majority foothold in America. As for me and my house, I fervently pray that we as a country wake up and not only appreciate but promote and teach our Western values and traditional American liberties before they’re taken from us either by force, fiat, foreign zealots, activist judges or power-drunk fundamentally transforming socialist politicians. One and done, folks. One and done.

I wonder … who, if anyone, bought the 6.20 carat diamond solitaire ring I saw available at Costco.com recently for $1 million? What do you think that conversation would go like? “Sweetcakes, I love you so much, I got you a little something. Now, don’t worry, it was only a million bucks at Costco. Oh, and I picked up some more toilet paper, dish soap and a big honkin’ bottle of fish oil capsules, too.” Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? Then again, I’m an incurable romantic.

I wonder … if I’ll ever be at an economic place that I don’t start laughing hysterically when I get an unsolicited email blast about special jet discounts now available for all my private aviation needs. If these people knew that the only “flying” I’m likely to do these days is off the second story balcony of my home office when I can’t figure out how to pay the bills any given week. Sigh. It is fun to dream, though.

I wonder … why I’ve never before heard the term “haboob” to describe the massive sand storms that roll across the summer landscape in Arizona. This seems to be the year of the haboob – and I’m not talking about our current vice president. Rim shot!

I wonder … how I can ever thank the star-makers at NBC News enough for promoting Ann Curry, the former overly empathetic, drippingly sentimental and hyper-politically correct news-reader on their flagship Today Show, to her new position of co-couch-sitter alongside Matt Lauer. I now have one less weekday morning distraction and am able to work on pressing projects much sooner than I used to. Not that the über-liberal Ms. Curry is ideologically any different from her predecessors, Meredith Viera and that irrepressible cheerleader for all left-leaning causes Katie Couric. Heavens, no. It’s just that Ms. Curry’s interviews and “reportage” drip so heavily with breathless sincerity, hand-wringing angst and feigned concern, she routinely gets in the way of her stories and subject matter. The power-off button on my remote is so much easier to push on now.

Whew. See what I mean? It’s a wonder I get anything done.
I’ll see you ’round town.

  Jim Chase