Two people deserve Nobel Prizes. The person who invented the mute button. And the person who originally situated the mute button on the steering wheel. Eighty percent of the talk from car radio has the power to turn a normally intelligent person of average common sense into a raving lunatic. DJs ramble on about nothing, using grammar that proves the absolute demise of the education system. Media noise is like a perpetual avalanche. Everywhere you turn. In the gym, the restaurant, the hospital room, the car, the plane. Talking heads talking, talking. Telling you the same thing every half hour, repeating, repeating. Letting you know everything bad happening to everyone everywhere in the world. The avalanche is a roar. And then you remember you have an option. All you need is a thumb. And the button. Ahhhh.

Anyone out there, worried sick about the economy, must not be paying attention as 2003 expires. Evidently, you’re selfishly fixated on not having a job. Or seeing your business languish. Or maybe you’re too preoccupied with your plummeting net worth. It’s a pity. Because the proof of prosperity is palpable. Look around. Every major highway is under expansion and miles of plowed earth promise new and wider beltways. Existing roadways are in gridlock. Stockholders of orange barrel stock are rolling in it. New retail shopping centers are outstripping the ones across the street, and they’re outstripped by newer ones under construction down the road. Housing starts are at a 20-year high. The populace has okayed millions to build new schools to prepare even more children to read at a 7th grade level when they apply to college. If, on your average Friday or Saturday night, you want gourmet food or simple road kill, be prepared to wait at least an hour as the unemployed in record numbers swill the suds and scarf the steaks. And throughout the land, thousands of the rank and file march into arenas and give a single day’s pay to watch athletes earn $50,000 for a single night’s work. But if these examples of a booming economy don’t persuade you that you’re better off then ever, all you need do is contemplate car dealer commercials on TV. You must have seen them. A throng fills the showrooms — excited, clean-cut, bright-eyed, ethnically diverse buyers flit here and there, swarming over the new models like ants at a Greek picnic. Announcers with gleaming smiles and piercing voices walk briskly among the crowds, gleefully inciting a buying frenzy. Or perhaps they simply have bladder problems. Regardless, the evidence of robust business is right there for all to witness. Car showroom after car showroom — literally awash with multitudes of eager patrons — is proof positive that the good times roll. Which is a colossal relief to me, because whenever I’m in a dealer showroom, it’s as vacant as aisle 13 at Home Depot.