Addendum-um

I have just come from picking up some delightful food at a Tex-Mex place in my neighborhood. Good food, well priced. Very nice. But it added a thought to my rant regarding energy. In this little tiny restaurant, there was a television on the wall. And it was on, playing some ridiculous Spanish soap opera. It was me and two guys talking Spanish as they sipped orange sodas and ate chips with salsa. Nobody was actually watching the television. At least in my neck of the woods, this is the norm now. It never used to be like that. But now, you can't walk into a restaurant or a barber shop or a car mechanic's without there being a TV set turned on. I just wonder, is it really oil we're addicted to? Or is it TV, which uses a hell of a lot of power? (Not that I can talk. I watch so much television that I practically AM a television.) Also, I wanted to note this news item: In March, the U.S. economy showed the biggest monthly increase in jobs in three years. Now it's not all it should be cracked up to be and the unemployment rate remains un-budged. But I still insist on claiming some credit for predicting we'd see movement on jobs in the spring.