Friday, January 8, 2010

Grind My Gears 12

When we were youngsters, a penny meant a lot to us. It could feed a family of 17 for months on end. See how shiny and round it is. Oh you disk with a raised surface on both sides, how good you feel against my bare cheek! Nowadays, pennies serve only to hold us back. They fill our pockets and weigh us down. We we notice that they have caused our pants to fall down around our ankles, we remove said pennies and scatter them on the ground like so much bird seed. How many of us have coffee can upon coffee can filled with this now clearly comical monetary device. The simple copper penny went out of style with the 8-track tape and the mood ring (hyperlinks provided for you young punks who have no idea what I am talking about).

Be all of this as it may, I am sickened by the OPEC oil sheiks and the gas company "executives" who feel that they can ridicule the 1¢ piece with even further devaluement. Drive past any gas station in this solar system, and, in fact, in other parts of the western Milky Way galaxy (go ahead, I'll wait), and you will see typical gasoline prices per gallon listed as $2.50 9/10 or $2.509. Do you see what is happening here? Do you truly understand? An entire industry has moved to a new monentary unit consisting of one-tenth of one cent. The new coins are presently being developed by the U.S. mints in Denver, Philadelphia, and on the island of Fiji. Do you have any idea how much shelf space the coffee cans filled with these new coins are going to take up? This whole thing really grinds my gears. It is time to put a stop to this. I hear you say, "But how, as an ordinary citizen, can I make a difference?". Well, clearly, you can't. But the first thing you need to do is to stage an old-fashioned sit in. I'm not sure what that is, but I believe it is something that the former Beatle John Lennon used to do on a regular based. Look how far that has gotten him.