We have heat! The apartment is now a balmy 71 degrees -- which would be more impressive if the day itself hadn't reached an unseasonably-warm 70 degrees, but a win's a win.

I'm actually just back from dinner with my parents -- dad grilled pork barbeque and mom made seasoned potatoes, and I, for my part, ate enough of both to choke a horse. Now I'm fighting a distinct and overpowering urge to drift off, so let's just see how far into this entry I can get before that happens.

...

Wow, that wasn't far, at all. Lemme try again.

So -- mid-December. Christmas is coming, geese are fattening, and old men are inexplicably finding pennies and ha'-pennies in their hats, all of which are unceremoniously thrown away because it's no longer worth fifty cents to put 'em all in those little coin wrappers.

I read on Slashdot the other day that they're going to be changing the composition of our metal U.S. currency because the cost of producing them, particularly as it applies to the raw materials involved, has overtaken the face value of the coins themselves. One would imagine this sort of thing would have taken precedent in discussions over coin issues of the recent years, but apparently most folks in charge were still debating over whether Alabama would be better represented on the back of their state quarter by either an engraved confederate flag or the state seal crossed over with a shotgun and a moonshine jug.

Legislation has been introduced to keep people from melting the coins down in order to sell the raw metal for a profit... but I gotta ask this -- if it's illegal to do that, what's protecting those jerks who do tasteless alterations on U.S. coins and sell them back to the public for twenty times their face value as 'patriotic collectibles?' I'm talking about the companies who take a dollar coin and paint over Sakagewea's face so she looks like she's crying over litter on the highways, or those special 9/11 tribute quarters where they've engraved images of the twin towers into a thin extra layer of silver which was taken from the actual dental fillings of genuine 9/11 corpses.

I suppose the rationale for the legal distinction between the two practices is that melting the coins destroys them completely, forcing the government to create new coins at an operating loss. However, as a concerned citizen I feel compelled to point out that, even though the altered collectible coins may still, technically, exist, they're effectively dead. People aren't likely to part with an ugly coin that they paid a ridiculously high amount for, and as long as at least one supermarket cashier is still awake in this country, those little abominations are NOT gonna be re-entering circulation. It doesn't take an eagle eye to spot the coin where JFK's hair has been rendered in day-glo orange.

In short, dear government, in the name of decency and, more importantly, a return to profitability, please find it within yourself to prosecute all altered-state-coin-retail-profiteers, regardless of their expressed 'patriotism.'

Shoot 'em if you have to.