Help! Burglar!

It seems about everyday I hear on the news of some elderly woman, man, or couple being fleeced by a flim-flam artist. Elderly people a lot of the time are easy targets for the con-man… they are sometimes gullible and many times sitting on their life savings.

I heard on the news the other day of a local government has found another way of fleecing the elderly. Yep, the Marietta Police will be fleecing the elderly, I have no doubt, unless things change.

Here is how and events leading up: A very high number of home security systems’ electronically notified the local law enforcement of something was wrong… security was broken.. and the law rushed out to the house calling only to find the family sitting down to dinner, or reading the paper, or watching TV – more times than not.

Marietta has decided that it is too expensive to send the cops to all these homes giving false alarms – or crying wolf. The authorities have decided to impose a fine on the homes that give false alarms… a stiff fine, up in the hundreds of dollars. I think I heard you are allowed 2 or 3 “Opps!”

Now, what group do you think are most paranoid about home invaders and let some fast talking salesman talk them into a complicated expensive alarm system? I would say the people over 70 or 75.

And which group do you think is mostly user unfriendly to user-friendly electronics? I think the same elderly group.

Now, the fleecing will begin. I wonder how long that is going to last before people realize it is the elderly being stripped of their savings?

High Crimes on the High Seas

Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, and a bottle of Diet Coke!

Well, maybe it is not a high crime. Well, maybe it is not a crime at all.

Here is our plan while we are at sea. On the ship you can buy a souvenir cup for something like $15 per person and with that cup you can go to any drink station and they will fill it up for you free. If you bought individual drinks each time, you are likely to spend more money.

We are going to buy only one cup and both of us use it. So, instead of spending $30 we will spend only $15. This isn’t exactly sword fighting or holding a maiden hostage or making the captain walk the plank, or swinging on a mast line to another ship with the valuable jewels in a leather pouch but fifteen dollars is fifteen dollars – right?