How can these things be legal? The only legitimate purpose the covers serve is to obscure the plate numbers, making it difficult to identify the vehicle. And only someone prone to committing some act that would warrant having to identify the vehicle would want to make identification difficult.

Getting on the highway with one of these things on your car is almost like walking into a convenience mart with pantyhose over your head. You know, just in case.

Did you know that stuff melts?

Well, yes and no. I love e-mail. It does make it easier to keep in touch with people. I can always reply to e-mail at my convenience.

The problem is, so can businesses. Reply to my e-mail at their convenience, that is. Too many companies have made it impossible, or at least very, very difficult, to contact them by anything other than e-mail. And who the hell knows where that e-mail goes.

There was a time when I could dial a 1-800 number and ask a real person a question. And more often than not, that person would give me an answer. Whether or not it was the correct answer is irrelevant — whoever's supposed to be answering the e-mail is the same incompetent guy who used to be on that phone — the point is that, by phone, I got an answer usually within 10 minutes. When I ask my question via e-mail, God only knows when I'll get a reply. It could be in a couple of hours, it could be tomorrow. Hell, I've gone two weeks before getting a reply. And far too often, I never get a reply at all. A touch-tone menu is nothing.

Sometimes it's a simple question that, once answered, would finalize my decision to buy a product. Explain to me in what way making a person wait two days to find out if the blades are interchangeable helps either the company or the customer. I asked a Web hosting company two days ago about their statistics software and had I got an answer immediately, they would already have my money. Yet, I'm still waiting and I'm now considering another host. The only problem now is when they will get back to me.

Why do we stand for this? If we don't do something now, the problem will only get worse. Phone numbers will cease to exist for any service. Heed my warning! There will come a day when paramedics may, or may not, respond to heartattack@911.org!

Then came games like Dragon's Lair and CyberBall — not to mention the sit-down simulator games — and prices started to rise. Two quarters, three quarters...a dollar. When I saw my first dollar arcade game I freaked. "A dollar? Who would pay a dollar to play a video game??"

But now, well, good luck finding any game that will even let you watch the introduction for as little as a dollar. A night at an arcade could cost a couple hundred bills for the same three hours of mindless fun I had when I was a kid.

Even 18 holes of video golf is six bucks. Six bucks! Can you even imagine sticking a five-dollar bill in a machine back in 1983? Hell, a friend and I shelled out somewhere in the vicinity of thirty dollars last night at the Blarney Stone to play a couple rounds of golf.

OK, so regular readers of this page will be aware of my feelings toward video golf, but hey...after four or five beers, almost anything's fun.

By the way, I made 23 over par.