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
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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.