NTH-THING Today a penny saved isn't worth the trouble.
Not too many years ago we appended a word here and there which insisted that a penny saved was a penny "earned"...to be put aside and others added as a fund for a forthcoming "rainy"day." No more. I doesn't work that way today.
Our federal mints still manufacture the humble one-cent piece as an official coin of our realm, but it no longer buys anything. We used to buy a two-foot length of "shoestring" licorice for a cent or so; other candies were a penny each; penny arcade shows were with us; penny postcards at the stmaster's window and other meaningful purchases could be made using the copper coins. But, all of that is gone today.
About the only place you see constant references to penny today is on "thing".When they found themselves to need a less valua e coin they broke a "thing" into four pieces which they came to call "farthings." These coins are non-existent today and without value save as curios. Our petrol people have innaugurated a system which announces gas price hikes. They have cobbled together a system which makes prolific use of brightly lit signs making the 9/l0ths of a cent a vital part of pricing their concoctions of refined crude and stewed grains on which we might operate our cars, trucks, extended limos, planes,water craft, lawn mowers, semis, motorized pogo-sticks and all and sundry creations riding on wheels. The concept of one cent is still in there somewhere, I'm sure but any sense of actual values involved has long since been eliminated. Gas prices continue to rise and it is beginning to sound like a European price list. The 9/10th decorations - many of them handmade by harried sign climbers. - proliferate in colorful displays in ever increasing increments.
The overall high potential prices peaks are not, oddly enough, caused by anyone. Who causes it? Could it,indeed,be the big oil firm?. "No, it is not
us! Could it be OPEC? How about the oft-wild eyed E-naut worried about whatever critter is being featured for extinction this week on the North Slope? Could it becaused by the "giant conspiracy" some fear? How does politics fit with it?
What do you think we might call our new tenth of a cent coin? Art work has been approved,I understand.The Obverse side will display a large picture of "Confusion" dondome in oils,of course.Imported. The Reverse will picture "Frustration."
I suggest we call them "nthings."
A.L.M. March 22, 2006 [c473wds]
I suggst we call them: "nthings"
