Did you ever wonder about certain things? Why is it that you can copy a movie to view later, but you can't copy a dvd that you already own? On one hand you can and on the other hand you can't. What kind of sense does this make? It is like when I go to the supermarket and every once in a while I will see a big sign that is advertising something on sale and it doesn't always make sense. An example of this was when I saw a sign for those small cans of tomato paste. They were advertised at thirty three cents each, but three for one dollar. This just goes to show you that things don't always make sense. Sometimes speeches by famous people don't always make sense. Remember Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense in the U.S.? Here is a paragraph from one of his speeches, "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know." I am no genius and I don't claim to be, but how in the world can anyone that was that high up in the government, say anything like that?

There are so many crazy things out there. I saw a label on a roast chicken salad, you know what it said? It said, now with roast chicken. My goodness, what do you expect to be in a roast chicken salad? I would love to know what was in that salad before? Why is it that when medical drug tests are conducted, some people that receive a placebo recover from their illnesses and some that take the drugs don't? Are the placebo people curing themselves by brain power? Let's look at the other side of the coin, are the people who are not being cured that used the drug, preventing themselves somehow from being cured? Could it be that whatever is in the placebo is good enough to cure people and we don't really need the expensive drug? Sometimes things that happen in court make no sense. One judge in the criminal court of New York had several ladies of the night come before him. He had seen them many times before in his courtroom. He told them that they were breaking the law and fined them each a few hundred dollars or thirty days in jail. When the girls said they didn't have any money, he gave them a week to get it. Where the heck did this guy think that the money was going to come from? He might just as well said go out into the street and make it. Is this what the judge calls deterring crime? Speaking of judges that seem to be a little light on top, a Family Court judge in New York state had a couple go before him on a support matter. The guy had moved out and if you met the wife, you would know why. Usually these judges order a portion of the guys salary to go to the wife. This poor guy goes before the judge and he asks the usual question, like what is your salary, where do you work and that kind of stuff. After the hearing the judge ordered the entire salary to go to the wife every week. The guy asked the judge how he was going to live? The judge replied, get a second job and work all night. It just doesn't make sense.

There are just so many things that don't make sense, that you just can't help but wonder who thought of them. An example of this is Braille instructions on the drive up teller in the bank lot. Unless someone has a walk up teller, how is a blind driver ever going to get to the bank. I guess he or she could get a tow there. The other day I had to call a famous computer company and I got their tech department. My problem was that the key that was printed on my Windows recovery disk didn't work. I had never tried it before and it was two years since I purchased the computer, so the warranty was over. The thing is, I was not looking for warranty work, only a key for the disk that worked. The first person that I got asked me for my customer number. I gave it to him and he told me that my warranty had expired. I said that I didn't want warranty work, only a key for my recovery disk, the one that came with it didn't work and that I hadn't noticed this before, because I never had to use it. I thought that this was pretty clear until he asked what sort of technical issue did I think that this was? I replied that this was not a technical issue at all, I just needed a key. Let me tell you this, I was connected to eight different people during that call. You would have thought that I had some sort of complicated issue that needed expert assistance. You need to know that every time you are switched to another department, you are put on hold. It was enough to drive a saint crazy. Finally the last person said to me, "what is you technical issue"? Before I could answer he said, "oh I see you have been switched eight times, I am so sorry." Well at least he was polite. Then he asked me again about my technical issues and I had to explain the whole story again. He then sent a new os recovery disk. The entire procedure had taken me hours, but I was determined not have to buy the windows operating system again. This whole thing just didn't make any sense, because anyone of the people I talked to could have sent me a new disk. I believe that this call cost the company far more than the price of any disk.

One of the things that I have always wondered about is paying more for something that offers you less. An example of this might be a mini car that might cost around twenty nine thousand dollars, but you could get an Accord, Camry or Elantra for less and they are all much larger. The same is true with food. Some people would rather eat at a fancy restaurant that has tiny portions than a good restaurant that has normal portions and they will pay more for the privilege. Maybe I could understand this if the fancy restaurant had such great food that no one else could compete, but my experience is that there are quite a few really good restaurants that have better food than most of the fancy places. Another thing that I can't understand is why people, when they were looking for you, say they found you in the last place that they looked. Hey if they found you in the first place that they looked, they wouldn't have had to look anymore.

Speaking of things that make no sense, you should have seen the movie that I watched on the SciFi channel the other day. Before I tell you about it, I have to say that I do something that drives my wife mad. If I am looking at a movie, no matter how bad it is, I will always watch the entire movie. I don't know why I do this, maybe it is just a habit, but even my kids criticize me for this. Anyway, I was watching this western vampire movie. Yes, I know that I should have known better, but I watched it. When the movie first started they took pains to explain the fact that you needed silver bullets, garlic and holy water to destroy these monsters. By the time the middle of the movie was reached, people were killing vampires right and left using ordinary guns with ordinary bullets. It was like someone had completely forgot the beginning of the script. Yep, it just didn't make any sense, but neither did the story line of the movie.

When I was in the U.S. Army there were a lot of things that didn't make sense. I was in a missile battalion. One thing that I remember very clearly, was the fact that we had to wax the missiles. Can you imagine this, waxing missiles so that they would look good during inspections. Another thing that I remember was the time we had a new company commander for only a week. He wanted to show us the power he had so he came into our barracks, which was a beautiful brick building from the turn of the last century. He couldn't find any dirt, because we really kept that place nice, so he had the first sergeant take out a knife and dig between the steps of the stair case. No matter where you would have done this, you would have pulled out something. This must have been dirt from 1890, that was about when the building was built. Then there was the process of peeling potatoes. When I was in basic training, the mess had this great automatic potato peeler. The way it worked was the unit was a huge drum. On the inside it was like emory cloth, but much stronger. A water hose was attached to the machine and this made it turn and tumble the potatoes and they rubbed against the sides of drum and this peeled them. When I got called for KP I figured that at least I wouldn't have to peel potatoes. Boy was I wrong. They made me peel them by hand and THEN put them into the peeler. Only the U.S. Army would do something like this. It made no sense at all.

There is no rhyme or reason to some of the things that people do. It seems to be worse when we are talking about organizations and some of their crazy rules. There are so many stories about crazy things that have happened to people when they had dealings with the Internal Revenue Service. The same is true for all government agencies at all different levels of government. Some things are just plain silly. If anyone wants to send me things that they have seen that don't make any sense, just drop me a line and if I get enough different ones, I will do another article on it. You can email me by clicking HERE.