Every communications pathway I’m likely to use, for whatever purpose, is filled with beggars.

My emails are besieged with political and charitable appeals for funds, both with direct appeals, i.e., just give us money; guilt-trips, i.e., if you don’t give us funding the children will die, or the other evil political party or candidate will triumph and the Republic will fall; or apparent appeals to my better nature, i.e., do the right thing (and give us money).

My snail mail is filled with the same, although the charitable solicitations there vastly outnumber the political ones.

And now, of course, every form of electronic entertainment or news is largely dominated by political solicitations, although the charitable beggars aren’t all that far behind.

This entire array of electronic commercial solicitations is largely and ostensibly aimed at making my life safer or somehow better, whether with high end “natural” food for my canines (with the implication that anyone who doesn’t buy it is depriving their dog); car repair insurance (asking whether I want to pay for unexpected vehicle damage or failure or have the insurance pay for it, ignoring the obvious fact that I’d be paying for repairs one way or the other); insurance buy-out scams; endless appeals for various forms of alcoholic beverages; and suggestions for medical products of one type or another (accompanied by a list of side effects that sound worse than the disease or condition the medical product purports to alleviate).

Then, assorted publications (and these are ones to which I subscribe) offer me the chance to provide, free of charge, the gift of a one-year subscription to someone else, thereby having me do some free marketing for them.

All this makes me feel like a curmudgeon, of the type portrayed in the “The Merry Minuet” song by the Kingston Trio some 70 years ago, where a stanza ends up “and I don’t like anyone very much…”