I'm Talking To YOU!

I just bet you think this is a test tile where I experimented with various glaze colors. Possibly. But more than likely it is a depiction of what I was saying (and is much calmer than what Susan was saying) to our elegant and expensive low-flow Toto toilet. Or, as they say in the plumbing business, our Commode. Whatever. It's 5 years old, the handle has broken twice and the flapper has been replaced once and needs replacing again. We won't talk about the fact that a standard plunger won't work on it but Toto doesn't care about that because it believes that its toilets will never have a problem. Never mind. It's finally working, barely, now.

I'm terrible at math but I think that a low-flow of 1.6 gallons (the Government-mandated requirement, stand back as Susan curses) multiplied by a minimum of 3 flushes means our low-flow toilet uses 4.8 gallons of water each time time a human being makes a visit.

Enough said.  I tried to appease Susan by going to Home Depot and buying 20 regular 100-watt incandescent light bulbs that she can stash away. In case you weren't keeping up, our Government is requiring manufacturers to phase out production of incandescent bulbs so that eventually only CF bulbs will be are available. You know, those CF bulbs that contain mercury and no one has figured out what to do with them when they burn out and you want to throw them away.

Let's see, what else is the Government thinking about sticking their fingers into? How about requiring military veterans and their families to pay higher health insurance premiums, when they had been promised, as a condition of enlistment, they would get it at a fixed low rate. Yep, they're poking around at that as a possible money-saver. Picture this: You enlist in the Army and are promised health care for life. You are trained to defuse IEDs (improvised explosive devices). You leave your family and go, more than once, to Afghanistan. You survive, come home, leave the Army and go to look, unsuccessfully, for a civilian job. "What are your job skills, son?" And now your grateful Government wants to take back a benefit you were promised? I don't THINK so.

As Roseanne Roseannadanna (here and here) used to say, "It's always something!"

And so on and so on. This is about the extent of the ranting and raving we do. At least we listen to what others have to say, without interrupting and without screaming, as opposed to those raving talking-head idiots on TV.  Civil discourse seems to have disappeared from our nation, along with sanity, as shown by the events in Tucson. A 9-year old girl? We have lost our way if we think this can be explained away.