Recently I received my energy bill and, as I typically do, turned straight to the balance due section. The total balance due this month was $0.00.

I scratched my head for a minute, double-checked and then triple-checked. Still $0.00.

At this point I decided to give my light bill more than the usual twenty seconds of consideration and read the whole thing. Under the heading, “Important Information About Your Bill,” read the following:

“The CE bill credit of $100 per residential distribution customer account is a condition of the Maryland Public Service Comission’s approval of the transaction between Constellation Energy and EDF Group.”

This means, ostensibly, that my next two bills are paid because of a major corporate buyout. Being a relatively new resident here in Baltimore, I had no idea that I would be on the receiving end of such a credit. The only question remains: what should I do? For a moment, I considered sending a thank you note and a $100 check to BGE, but that moment was short-lived.

As decidedly non-liberal as it is of me to say, maybe this isn’t a bad thing, environmental issues aside. I’m the first person to say that monopolies are bad. I said a million times that the end result of the recession would be mass consolidation of banking power into even fewer institutions than had it in the first place. That is most certainly bad. When it comes to energy, however, I’m a little more tolerant.

A cautionary tale: natural gas used to be the cheapest commodity you could have in Georgia. Millions of residents went out of their way to heat their homes, dry their clothes, and cook their food with gas, not just because it’s better, but because it’s cheaper. Then somebody got wise to the fact that Atlanta Gas Light had a monopoly on natural gas in Georgia, so deregulation legislation was passed which would allow consumers to have a choice in who they chose as their natural gas provider. Unfortunately, no matter who you picked as your gas provider, they were getting the gas to your house through Atlanta Gas Light pipes. What was once an $11 a month bill became a $92 a month bill, since all of the new companies had to rely on AGL’s existing infrastructure.

Monopolies aside, I pay less for gas and electricity every month than I do for my cellular phone, less than I would for cable if I had it, and certainly less than most people my age pay for a credit card bill. Constellation wants to keep its customers, so I doubt prices are going up anytime soon. The nightmare future where the evil energy empire jacks up the prices for the consumer to the point that you have to decide whether your child freezes or starves to death this month could one day happen, but I’m willing to put my faith into our future selves that we won’t let that happen. For once, let’s just let this one slide.

Everyone’s favorite pop-culture saucier, and my occasional business partner, Dekker Dreyer, has just published a book of short fiction to Kindle and iPhone. Check it out if you’ve got an extra $1.29 lying around.

I just want to give a shout out to the good people of the University of Mississippi for the overwhelming amount of consideration they’re giving to making Admiral Ackbar of “Return of the Jedi” and “IT’S A TRAP” fame their mascot. Let’s face it, how better to replace the Colonel Reb, a relic of a failed rebellion against the United States with a leader in a successful rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire. If you’re interested in more background on the Mon Calamari Admiral, click here. Facebook fan page here.

My best friend, Zippy, has a masters in Computer Security. That means in the last few years I’ve learned more than I could have ever imagined knowing about Security Theory (most importantly, that such a thing exists). The last time I saw him, Zip said the thing that most amazed him is that in the United Kingdom, the people at one point said, “The only way to be safe is to turn our country into a police state,” and the UK became a police state. In the United States, however, we’re becoming a police state, and we never had the conversation to decide that that’s what we want to be.

That conversation is happening right now. Members of Congress are now calling for the use of full-body scanners, that, near as I can tell, are computers that do what every 13-year-old boy who’s seen too much Skinemax can do. These machines can look at a fully-clothed person and create a digital image of what they look like naked. Apparently this contraption could also reveal whether or not you’re hiding plastic explosives in your bra or have a ceramic knife in your colon.

The debate the news outlets are highlighting is the obvious one: security or privacy? Of course the conservatives want the machines because they’ll make us safer and the liberals don’t want them because they’re arguably an invasion of privacy. Of course the truth of the matter is that liberals rely on the ACLU for money and votes, but the liberals and conservatives both rely on donations from the security companies, so these things are a foregone conclusion.

I just want to take a moment to reflect on the reason they’re all going to give us that this is absolutely necessary: A man who is so stupid that he gives all other Nigerians and Muslims a bad name tried to blow up a plane on the way to Detroit, arguably the least-valuable major city in America. His name was on a terrorist watch list, he was thwarted in his attempt, and he will unquestionably spend the rest of his natural life in prison.

Am I the only person who thinks that this is like your alarm system malfunctioning when a burgler breaks into your house, your neighbors call the cops and the guy gets caught, but instead of fixing the alarm system you nail your windows shut?

Every time someone in this society commits a terrorist act, there are warnings. The 9/11 hijackers were reported to the FBI, the Fort Hood shooter had made multiple outbursts that implied he was becoming increasingly unstable, and the most recent would-be terrorist was reported by his own father. Shouldn’t we be looking into fixing a system that doesn’t do the one thing it was designed to do? If we make one system that doesn’t work, who’s to say the next system is going to tell us anything useful? Remember those journalists who proved the heightened security after 9/11 couldn’t stop this kind of contraband in the first place?

Fortunately, our democratically elected leaders are on the case. Here’s George Carlin saying it better than I ever could:

According to a study at Keele University in Britain, swearing not only makes you feel better but increases your tolerance for pain. Researchers had the participants stick their hands into a bucket of ice water while repeating a swear word of their choice. The control group stuck their hands in ice water while repeating a word they would use to describe a table. Guess who was able to keep their hands in the ice water. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

Meanwhile, I have this meditation on swearing to keep you busy.

Sometimes when I’m watching TV and the power goes out, I find myself wondering what the going rate for a soul is in these days of economic hardship. This guy knows the answer:

$45 million to do 3 more years of Idol. Could you say no?

I came across the above-linked article about Thomas Paine while reading BBC News. Apparently there’s a big to-do in the UK about putting up a statue of the man who is short-changed by rarely being mentioned as a founding father of both the American and French Revolutions. The lack of a statue is hardly surprising. Putting up a statue of Paine in London would be like waiting another 150 years and then putting up a statue of Che Guevara in Washington DC.

Regardless, I first came across Thomas Paine when I was assigned to read “Common Sense” for homework in my 10th grade American literature class. While the gravity of the phrase, “All religion is hearsay,” didn’t quite sink in right way, the rhetoric of the revolution was a lot more interesting than the sermons of Puritan settlers. Ultimately the writings of Thomas Paine have become a huge influence on my political and religious opinions, and I highly recommend them. There’s any number of published books of the man’s writing, but I think he’d be proud to know they’re available for free as part of the public domain.

After years of speculation, Futurama finally pulled a Family Guy and got renewed for a 26 episode season. The big difference in this case is that Futurama’s being renewed by Comedy Central and not Fox. Let’s be honest, if you could watch Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy within a 2-hour block on a Sunday night, your face would melt off from the awesomeness (even though Simpsons is now Ultimate Simpsons and not nearly as good as it was 15 years ago).

I’ll be honest on this one. Futurama didn’t impress me that much when it first came out, and my freshman roommate in college, Will Phillips, had every episode on VHS (long before Fox figured out how lucrative the DVD market could be). Even then I was a lukewarm fan, but Adult Swim and the Futurama comics eventually convinced me how great this show is. Congratulations, Futurama, you’ve earned it.

By the way… all the Futurama porn out there almost makes me want to turn on the filtered search option.

Some of you may have heard about President Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East. If you’re not a regular reader of Zahi Hawass’ blog, then you may not realize the president took a tour of the pyramids at Giza during his visit. Maggie was there to film the event. She’s responsible for about half the footage in the embedded video, but I’d say it looks pretty good for her first time handling a camera. Check out the credits! Isn’t she wonderful?

Just read the news. I admit to not being a huge Carradine fan until Kill Bill came out, but that inspired me to go back and watch a bunch of Kung Fu, not to mention Deathrace 2000. So ends a legend.