Heaven help us, though, if or when those pristine pockets of America start being invaded by hordes of Segway-scooter-riding cell-phone jabberers. Do you think I'm kidding? Read this. And weep.

Now, it sounds like we may have enough sensible senators in both parties to rise up and shoot this piece of legislative lunacy down -- this time around. But who knows what the future holds?

One thing I do know: Segways don't exactly provide the (somewhat) bearproof containment-and-shelter factor that, say, a camper -- or, heck, even a tin-can compact car -- affords. And from what I understand, the Segway's top speed is 12.5 miles per hour; the American black bear's is 25 -- "when," the site helpfully adds, "it is chasing prey."

This just in from Inbox's Recycling Eccentrics Department: The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story yesterday about a gent from South Philly who bicycles everywhere he goes, is an avid (did someone say obsessive?) recycler, and publishes a calendar called Cycle & Recycle that is intended to be reused every dozen or so years when the dates cycle back around again.

I cite the story here mainly because it includes several odd facts that I found intriguing, such as that there are only 14 possible calendar date combinations, and those combinations repeat themselves at somewhat uneven intervals; and that bicycles achieve the energy equivalent of 1,100 miles per gallon.

Speaking of miles per gallon, are gas prices dropping as fast in your corner of the world as they are here in Ohio? Every time I go out, they seem to have slid another few cents. This morning I passed a station selling Regular at $2.09. Am I nuts, or were we shelling out $3 a gallon a few weeks ago? At this rate, by next summer the BPs and and ExxonMobils of the world will start paying us to take gas off their hands.

Yeah, right; wishful thinking. What's really going on, the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me surmises, is that the oil companies and the home-heating-gas utilities have gone into cahoots with one another, and from now on we'll see gas-pump prices sag every fall and winter as home heating bills skyrocket, and then, when the weather warms back up, those pricing trends will flip-flop. And when you add it all up, little by little -- or more likely, a lot by a lot -- we'll keep paying more.

Write it down: You read it here at Inbox first.

Oh, and incidentally, the CIA and the Mafia co-killed JFK, no one has every really set foot on the moon, the world is flat, and Elvis lives.

P.S. One last word to the wise: Our managing editor, whose initials are BL, informs me that wearing tinfoil hats will keep the aliens from reading your mind.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.