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Yes, I know what the acronym SNAFU means so don’t go assuming that I do not. The acronym SNAFU originated in the military, if you didn’t know that, and it goes like this; “Situation normal, all ——— up.” (expletive deleted!) It has been softened to read “Situation normal, all fouled up.” Wikipedia says the definition is something that is hopelessly and completely confused. It does seem to exactly fit the challenge that this damnable government mandated change has visited upon us. I have heard all the reasonable explanations about why we have this change but it still seems unreasonable, confusing, and costly and I don’t know why “if it wasn’t broke, why should we fix it?”

Think of all the people that months and months ago tried to get online to buy one of the ‘coupons’ for $40 which is no small amount for many people. First of all you could only buy one coupon per household or so I understood. I tried three times to order online and each time ran into some kind of difficulty and finally was told they had run out of coupons! The coupons were to be used to defray the cost of the black box which would cost another $40 making the price $80 total even if you could find them anywhere.

I heard many reports of people who ordered and received a black box only to find the stupid thing didn’t work. If it had been bought using a coupon the money wasn’t refundable except for the 40 bucks at the store, nothing back for the coupon. Many people had no idea how to install the dang things if they had one. What a bunch of garbage that was. Too bad we can’t fault Clinton, Bush or Obama for this one, its just the stupid politicians period!

The junk yards will be full of perfectly good but digitally outdated televisions and probably the next thing we will have to pay is a fee to have them disposed of properly. Maybe we can dig a hole and bury them.

Even though we have one brand new digital television we have 3 others that we seldom use but ‘just in case’ we might need them in the future, had to have a black box for each of them. We have a satellite but unfortunately we don’t get ‘local channels’ on those so that is why we have to have black boxes for them at $80 each because the government ran out of coupons! It’s just not right and its expensive.

The first HD-TV we got was a gift for our birthdays a couple of years ago from our daughter and we were spoiled by the beautiful color and clear picture. We kept that one in the kitchen because it was a small screen and often we would huddle around it to watch our favorite shows.

One of our grandsons had wondered for years why we didn’t ‘turn loose of some bucks’ and get a big HDTV but we felt as long as ours was working well and was big enough for our small den we could do without one. He was here recently and when he came into the den he said to his Pop, “Wow, Pop, welcome to the 21st century!” Ours is not very big by some standards, just 36 inches but plenty big enough for us. It is the only TV in house that you can turn on easily although there are three remotes and sometime you have to use all three. So far Pat is the only one who can turn on the televisions in the other rooms. They might as well be rocket science as it seems to me they come on in a different way each time and then sometimes don’t come on no matter how much I cuss. The kitchen TV is a weird one, doing its own thing often and today when we turned it on it spoke Spanish to us. I think it has a mind of its own and sometime no mind at all.

I am completely whipped by all the electronics we have to deal with in our house. I even have a dishwasher that has a Hebrew mode or is that my microwave? It is all so confusing and I am well aware that all this confusion is absolutely due to the fact that the older we become the less we like change especially senseless (in my opinion) change.

I feel so bad for the people that for one reason or another only have the entertainment of their television set but that is no longer available to them due to the switch over to digital television. Everyone can’t go out and buy an antenna or a new digital television and many can’t afford someone to come in and take them by the hand and lead them through this television maze. You can cuss the government but you can’t change it much.

Oh well, soon I will be taking possession of a new car with no keys! Now what about those apples? Does that mean I can never lock my keys in the car because it is not a keyed ignition? No it does not. You still (as I understand it) have to have a key in the car, in your pocket or purse, so the ignition can ‘sense’ the key or it won’t start. I imagine you have some kind of code or numbers on the door to lock that. Something else to memorize and I have just now learned my social security number.

Even though I thought we ought to have a GPS system because I don’t do directions well we opted out, they cost an extra $4500 and I can think of other things to spend that kind of money on. But Pat has insisted we have a back up camera so I won’t be backing into things but I think that is superfluous because if I can’t look in the rear view or side mirror and see what’s behind me what good will a back up camera do unless it blows a whistle or something. SNAFU’S everywhere, I can see them coming.

BTW do you know that my spell check doesn’t even have Obama in its dictionary, yet Clinton and Bush and SNAFU are there. Go figure that one, just a little aside here.