Parker County Today April 2018 | Page 114

our opinions: CURMUDGEON MUSINGS The Last BY MARK BROWN Word Technology— Enabling Total Strangers To Gossip About You W e all have people that disagree with us from time to time, or even use social media to perpetrate their thoughts and maybe run you down. I found a couple of quotes recently that speak to that. try for 100 days. So many choices. I never had this much confusion over something so simple. Again, it’s made our lives more complicated. On top of all that, some of those sleeping rigs cost upwards of 6 to 10 thousand dollars! “When people cut you down or talk behind your back, remember they took time out of their pathetic lives to think about you.” So I’m just going to get an air mattress from Amazon for $99, and rest much easier. “When people bother you in any way, it is because their souls are trying to get divine attention and your bless- ing.” And finally, “People who have no life will always try to start drama in yours.” On to more interesting things ... I have two subjects to talk about this month. Just things I’ve encountered in the process of trying to do business with various people in a number of different industries. First, let’s talk about mattresses. I haven’t bought a mattress in several years, so imagine my surprise when my wife and I sauntered down to the local mattress store. After an hour of laying around on several mattresses of all different kinds, which was confusing — springs, memory foam, gel memory foam, pocketed coil, Euro-top, beds you can raise up, beds that have a mobile app, beds that change support and pressure ... wow! As if life isn’t complicated enough, the whole mattress world has exploded in price. So what did I do? What any red-blooded consumer would do, go to the Internet and try to find out what’s up. And no I didn’t go to Facebook and talk to other dysfunctional people about it, because we all know you cannot believe most of what you read on Facebook. So I looked up the mattress story, and now we are even more confused. Some beds you can 112 The other confusing area of life -- and, yes, maybe it’s just me, and I will certainly admit to that, is what we used to call television. At the risk of sounding old, and I am; I am from an era of maybe three main channels NBC, ABC, CBS, and then there was PBS. Of course, if you were a contortionist, you might get another three channels on UHF, because you had to twist the little antenna and hold it in the perfect spot to get any reception. Point is, there were not a lot of decisions to make; you could just sit down and be entertained. But, no longer ... Now, I don’t know what to do when we sit down to watch TV. There’s Satellite TV, Cable TV, some kind of digital antenna, and all of the others. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon — actually too many to even mention. Literally 100s of channels and choices. So, making mattress and television choices has taken up hours and hours of my life that a few years ago I never gave a moment’s thought to. Thank goodness I bought the boxed set of Seinfeld DVDs a few years ago. I know what you’re thinking — who has a DVD player? Well, I do, and it’s sitting right by my fax machine. So now I’m gonna lay down on my waterbed with my flip phone and put on a Seinfeld DVD, and wait for a fax ... Goodnight.