Dwain Walden is editor and publisher of The Moultrie Observer.

Just recently I sat out in the porch swing and just wondered about stuff. And what I wondered about ran the spectrum – a veritable cornucopia of deep thoughts.

I’ve read where thinking about a lot of things on a regular basis will help prevent Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if that’s scientific or just a hunch, but I think it’s good for us to take time out to think.

So one of my first thoughts had to do with that cable TV show called “Doomsday Preppers.”  This show is about a handful of gun nuts and other people who got banned from the carnival because they were just too bizarre.  These people are storing up food and ammunition, waiting for a time when society breaks down to something just short of “Planet of the Apes.”

And they keep referring to the “apocalypse.” After observing some of these people I wondered just how many of them could even spell “apocalypse.”

Of course it’s a rhetorical question, because I don’t think a one of them was ever involved in a spelling bee, which may also explain why they think they are the ones who will keep our species alive. Now that’s a scary thought in itself.

Then I wondered how many people have ever purchased a box of Post Raisin Brand just because it has two more scoops of raisins than it used to have.  I think if the amount of raisins in a box of cereal had any real marketing value then a person would just buy a box of raisins.

Moving right along here: Back in high school and college I wondered if I would ever use algebra. Well, I found my answer. Just recently I started looking into Medicare and the formulas required to arrive at a health care plan that involves doughnut holes, Plan B, drug cards,  supplemental insurance, Part F, open enrollment, pre-existing factors, etc., etc. And yes Virginia, you eventually will use algebra. And in the quest to get all of this health plan worked out you may also expand your vocabulary skills and seek advice from Swamp Witch Hatti over in Slidell, Louisiana.

So I asked myself, why does life have to be this complicated? I wondered if in fact we believe that everything has to be complicated to work. Then it hit me — people sell complexity. What I mean is, I think some folks make stuff complicated so that you have to hire an interpreter to explain it to you thus increasing revenue flow via the middle man.

With that in mind, I asked my friend to check out the Ochlochnee River conditions because we had planned to go fishing. He called back and said we couldn’t go. I asked why. He said, “They got some rain upstream and the river is as muddy as an insurance policy.”

The day before I had watched a TV special about the Bermuda Triangle and an incident back in the 1940s where a squadron of fighter bombers had disappeared without a trace. These five planes had flown out into the Atlantic from a south Florida airbase on a practice run. Radio operators along the Florida coast heard transmissions and the flight leader saying they were lost.

Now I’m no flight navigator nor am I a pilot, but I did live and work in downtown Atlanta for a while. And I have stayed overnight in a Holiday Express.

My thought: It was a clear afternoon. They had plenty of fuel when their compasses began to fail and they declared they were lost. Why didn’t they fly toward the sun? They would have hit Florida or South Carolina. While algebra was pretty tough for me,  geography was relatively simple.

Here’s a closing thought. Would it take Congress so long to come up with a viable health care plan if they had the same kind of coverages that we do?

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)