A moment with

How does the anchor on the 6:30 news know why the stock market went up 84 points or down 213 points? Was there really a single reason that the average of 30 stocks went up x points or down y points? If he does know... who told him?

The stock market plunged 123 points today with heavy trading and I have no idea why.

That I would believe.

Also, a drop of 100 points seems like pretty bad news. But a 100 point gain never is reported as pretty good news. I demand satisfaction.

This may all be sounding unreasonably cranky, if so... I apologize. I trust you to hold an intervention if I veer for too long into ranting-obsessive-complainer mode. When I start sounding like Andy Rooney, that's the warning signal.

I never much liked carpet. It seems to me that if I've got a floor that I can walk on, that's good enough. Why do people spend spend thousands of dollars on nice hardwood floors only to cover them up? Is the floor cold? Why does it need a coat? It's a floor - an inanimate object, it may get cold, but it can't feel cold. Some carpet is tall, some is short, and it comes in all sorts of colors. What's wrong with beige? I like beige. Remember shag carpet from the 70's? What were we thinking? Some people put carpet in their bathrooms. I put a lot of things in bathrooms, but carpet isn't one of them. Some people send me carpet samples. I don't know why. Here's a blue one. Here's a red one. I don't even know what color this one is. What should I do with all these carpet samples? The only carpet I would like is a magic carpet... I'd get on it and fly away from all these darn carpet samples.