The world is leaving the elder members of our society behind. Technology baffles many and there is no easy way around it. We now have phones that will do everything but change the baby. Items of our everyday life have become more complicated instead of more helpful. Why? The simple answer is that we can. We can make computer chips that can handle many different functions and just because they can, we make them do it.

Why can't Fuzzy buy a work pickup truck that has vinyl seats and rubber mats with a simple AM/FM radio? Why can't I get a TV with a remote control that just turns the set on and off, changes the channels and the volume? There is just too much crap out in the world that instead of making life simpler, it is making it more complicated.

Technology is rushing us headlong towards disaster. Cash registers that calculate the change has caused many of our young people working in the retail sector to lose the ability to add and subtract.  Without the machine, they just can't do it. You go into a store, restaurant or any other public place and have to listen to others private phone conversations as they continue their call as they try to order. We are becoming very rude to one another.

There is hope on the horizon. There are companies who are beginning to realize that simplicity is needed in our lives. Fuzzy has found a cell phone for his 89 year old father that he can actually use. No longer does he need to push and hold a button to turn it on, just push the on/off button. It has three large buttons to call the operator, home or 911. It has a voice dial phone directory and simple yes and no buttons to operate it. It makes him safer out in the world and eases Fuzzy's mind.

This is just one example of a company who saw a need for something less complicated and acted to produce a product that is simple and easy to use. On the other hand, this approach can also run amok if taken to extremes. We now have voice activated controls in our cars that are coming off the assembly lines. You can place cell phone calls or order up your favorite music, call a barbershop, pizza delivery and a myriad of other things, all of which diverts the drivers attention from the primary task at hand which is driving the car!  We have already had to outlaw the use of hand held phones and texting while driving because some of us think we can do multiple things at the same time. I wonder if that guy texting on his phone as we hurtle down the highway could shave and brush his teeth at the same time?

Fuzzy's answer to all of this is just because we have gadgets that can preform multiple tasks doesn't mean we need to use them. There was a saying that was popular in the engineering circles of the 70's and 80's. We even had placards with it on them. It was a focus point of many design review meetings. We surely need to resurrect it and bring it back to the forefront. What you ask is it? Very simple, KISS " keep it simple stupid".

CNN Special Report ,The Nations Power Grid can be shut down by hackers!!!  Let's scare the crap out of the public  and give the hackers encouragement to redouble their efforts. Oil has topped $130 a barrel and gasoline hits $4.00 a gallon and we haven't seen the end yet. Food bills are doubling. Milk is at $5.00 a gallon.  Meat and poultry are soon to become out of reach for the older members of our society.

Those of us living on fixed incomes, some at or below the poverty level, are once again becoming the forgotten among us. The Economists tell us the bubble will break and things will come back down in price, just wait it out. Many of us are coming to the end of our ropes. It is almost impossible to put gas in the car to make it to our many doctor appointments. Do I buy groceries or gas?

We are upset over all of the jobs and businesses leaving our country. Now there is an advertisement on our TVs extolling the benefits of doing business in Malaysia. I sit here trying to enjoy a morning cup of coffee and here before me in Hi Def and living color is Jeffery Immelt trying to sell me on the idea how wonderful it would be to move my business to an Asian country! Who is Jeffery Immelt? That unamerican is none other than the Chairman and CEO of  GE! That's right, General Electric. Kind of  makes Fuzzy want to run out to the store and buy a light bulb. Damn. I feel proud having GE appliances in my house.

Fuzzy has great trepidation before reading today's local newspaper. Yesterday we voted on the school budget for the coming year. The new budget has a five million plus dollar increase. I would hope it didn't pass but then we always hear "its for the children". Will my taxes take a jump? Can I and others afford to keep our homes?  All I hear on the news is endless blather on which candidate has the most votes for the nomination but they are not telling me that there is a plan somewhere to help put a lid on this runaway world.

We all need to help put on the breaks by controlling our budgets. Stop the extra spending that is fueling this runaway train.

It is not just my life that seems to be  running amok. Everyday the news sounds the alarm. The price of a barrel of oil hits another record high, food riots in the third world, food banks unable to feed the low income citizens, supermarket prices are rising faster than incomes.

E-mails are forwarded pointing fingers at various groups, companies and individuals for the the problems plaguing us. Don't buy gas on a certain day, boycott a certain company, conserve and so on and so on. I can feel the frustration of the writer and senders of these e-mails.  However, they all are missing the point! The point is that the world's economies are running out of control. Each problem is not just local to one city, region or country, but worldwide.

We can, and most likely will, go on complaining and pointing our fingers at various culprits real or perceived. But we are not ,as a people, doing anything to cope with or control, let alone fix,  the problems. We can look back at what we have sewn and are now reaping but we need to act together and do something. I am sad to say we cannot seem to be able to do that. We cannot get enough of us together to put forth a concerted effort to fix or repair our life situation. We have raised a bunch of isolationist children in whom we have ingrained a deep sense of me first, not in my backyard and let the government fix it. I don't have time because I am working too hard to keep a house and car that I never really could afford but bought anyway. I can however wring my hands and cry woe is me and the President is to blame. True, the buck does stop on his desk, but he alone didn't create this, the congress and all of us helped.

Woe to all of us! Fuzzy is having trouble dealing with a civilization that has lost all of its common sense. We have now passed a rule that all the school buses in New York State can no longer sit with idling engines while they are waiting at a school because it costs too much in fuel. WELL who would have thought? Why does common sense have to be legislated? Are we as a people that self-centered and stupid that we do not even realize when we are being wasteful?

A local power company had a news article printed about them because they put forth the idea that we should, in order to save money, conserve. WELL who would have thought. That required a whole article. Economists appear on news channels telling us to shop store brands and use coupons as well as buy in bulk when possible. WELL who would have thought. My family always shopped in that manner but now it is touted as new idea. Fuzzy never thought he was so far ahead of the curve. It is just to easy to be wasteful.

What does Fuzzy think can be done? Basically with the population and mindset we have now, the hard answer is, nothing. We can do nothing because we cannot work and act together. We listen to the rhetoric spewed forth by the political candidates about how they will fix things, bullshit! No one person can fix this alone.

Tell me you are going to make drastic changes in the way the government does business, that pork barrel add ons will no longer be tolerated that support for the country cannot be bought or bartered, and backroom deals are unacceptable. Tell me that you are going to conserve not only in your personal life but in your public life as well. Mandate, and if necessary legislate, conservation because as a people we are too stupid to realize that conservation IS mandatory if we are to survive ourselves. Tell me you are going to work with and cooperate with the rest of the world and stop pissing them off. Tell me how you are going to foster the technology to bring us back from the brink of economic disaster. Tell me you are going to push for more nuclear power plants and that not in my backyard is unacceptable. Tell me you are going to protect our rights as assured us in our constitution. Tell me about how you are going to foster, or better yet demand, cooperation among our political leaders. If you can tell me these things then perhaps you will get my vote. Then you had better live up to your promises!

Fuzzy believes that in the voting booth this fall should be choice entitled NONE OF THE ABOVE. If this gets the most votes then the political parties should be forced into a do over with no nationwide campaining amongst party maembers for the nomination. This is an unlikely senario so Fuzzy, like all of the rest of us, will then vote for the lesser of two evils. But Fuzzy will vote!

I ask that those of you who read this posting forward it on to others. Perhaps, just perhaps, we might wake up and smell the coffee. Conserve in everything, not just gas, but electricity, heat, cooling and groceries. Get tough people, stand up for yourself and in that way you will be standing up for others. Fight for ourselves! Fight wastefulness in our homes, jobs and neighborhoods. There is no THEY, there is only US. They are not doing this to you, you are doing it to yourself and all of the rest of us are helping. As POGO once said "I have met the enemy and they is us".