Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," Memorial Day issue! Remember, hate the war, not the warrior. In all my long life, I've never heard someone say, "Goddamn, I wish I could go back to the front lines and kill some more people!"

We've written many times about Memorial Day here at TGAB, so today's sermon is not going to be about patriotism, but about stupidity. Frankly, I'm feeling stupid, and I wonder if I'm alone in my idiocy.

What's bothering me is that technology doesn't make any sense.

EXHIBIT A: OIL RIG

Look at this thing! For the love of fruit flies, it looks complicated to me! All that scaffolding, all those parts. I would almost make book on the fact that more than one fine mind spent itself designing this puppy. Of course, you would expect something complicated like this, given its purpose. Not easy to go down deep in that dark water, drill a hole, and suck up fossilized liquid plant matter from Hell's basement. You've got to have some immensely elaborate equipment to do the job.

Seriously. Peruse this picture. Is it hard to imagine that something could go wrong on equipment like this? I guess I'm just stupid. I look at that picture, and I say to myself, "But what if Tab A gets pulled out of Slot B somehow?

It could be that a lot of that steel and stuff is just for artistic embellishment, so the oil rig looks good in photographs. I honestly don't know. You tell me. I might paint it a different color, or hang some Christmas lights on it, if the whole thing is just a clever facade, and what's really needed is just the Awesome Augur and a few deep sea divers.

EXHIBIT B: SOLAR PANEL

Here's where I feel like a stone cold moron. This thing looks so easy to make that you could put Red Green and his duct tape to work for a few hours, and it would be done. Heck, when I was a mere stripling I had a magnifying glass that I used to focus the sun on dried leaves and set them on fire.

I admit this could be total ignorance on my part, but solar panels look like they could be made by the millions in a converted Coca-Cola factory and slapped onto rooftops by anyone brave enough to climb a ladder.

Why am I so stupid? Please give me the details of this Intelligent Design. We put so much faith in Exhibit A, when Exhibit B seems so much more practical. Why, if you were to compare Exhibit A to Exhibit B using a natural model, Exhibit A would be Homo sapiens, and Exhibit B would be some basic, one-celled microscopic critter swimming on the locker room floor in some gym.

MRSA MRSA me. I'm so confused.