Modern Conveniences

Well, here we are in the throes of 2006 and the start of another year.Dick Clark has come and gone in Times Square and the adventure begins. The new frontier around here with my colleagues seems to be the dread of receiving the monthly heating /natural gas bill. Anticipation runs high as dread and despair come together in the little crisp envelope with "ATMOS" written in the upper left hand corner. Now Sandy has given me the choice of dropping down the thermostat or moving in with her mother, and I very astutely tried to decrease our consumption. Imagine our surprise when we shakily opened the bill and $500.13 proudly jumped into our faces.!!! I remember the good old days when $45 was an average heating bill.I came up this morning of a plan to subsidize the gas bill with a novel approach. It's so simple that others will follow suite. I will charge an energy tax to everyone who enters our doors.For instance: should we have dinner guests each person will chip in $11 per hour for the time spent enjoying the witty conversation and Sandy's superb home-cooked meal. Should someone just be bored and want companionship, the cost is merely $6.oo an hour. It must be understood that the companionship is free: the warm chair is what will cost you.Drinks are extra. The fact may also come at a surprise that we're not exactly lackidasical in our approach to warmth. No sir! Our energy efficient thermostats in three different zones would allow us to rent our living space as meat freezers during most of a 24 hour period. Our house generally shares the temperature of Mammoth Cave which is somewhere around 52 degrees.Somewhere is a Nerd behind a keyboard who can Calculate how much extra my bill will be if we just raise the temperature one degree. It seems that all of our utilities are owned by thne people who enrich our lives with the Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, and World Wars every fifty years or so.On proper reflection it seems that maybe this will be the first Reich in modern times that is winning a major war, at least they are in my little world. It seems that we have to defeat countries for them to come back and royally whip our asses. Remember Pearl Harbor?Think Lexus and Avalon. Georgetown,Kentucky down the road makes Camry and we ship the money to Tokyo.Battle of the Bulge? Think Mercedes: 60 years ago the Marshall Plan was rebuilding Europe and Berlin; now they're selling us luxury cars. As a country we really know how to punish the aggressive losers! Davy Crockett and the Alamo ? GM has made cars in Mexico for years and what appliances not made in Taiwan are made in Mexico. We really showed those Pancho Villas, Didn't we?Petroleum and Osama Bin Laden and Saudi Arabia. Now don't the Arabians really love us?And Iraq? Where in the hell this is going is anyone's guess. This ranting started with an exorbitant natural gas bill and has gone around the world.I really want a simple life, and wish for some in-between common ground. In hindsight maybe the real villains are the health care industry and insurance companies. In the not too distant future We will be making choices for Insurance , heating and cooling, or gasoline.I didn't mention food shelter or clothing. There's no easy answer.