Inspired by two other Walletpop bloggers who wrote; Mad about gas prices? Light your car on fire! and Mad about gas prices? Go to a dunking booth, I thought I'd weigh in on the subject with my idea. If you're mad about gas prices, stop mowing your lawn!

Although your local municipality might take exception to your sparing the blade, in addition to making a passive gas pricing protest, not cutting your lawn could save you a bundle of money. Consumer Reports states that lawn maintenance costs about $700 per acre, per year. Your grass roots protest might put some green back in your pocket.

If sowing your seeds of discontent puts furrows into the brows of your neighbors, when your grass gets too long you could just get a goat. Although they smell bad, attract flies, and have little regard for what vegetation they eat or don't eat, I can tell you personally that goats manicure a lawn very nicely. The biggest problem with goats though, is that they tend to roam if not well fenced. Be prepared to replace your neighbor's rhododendrons often. Hence the reason our household is now goat-less.

The answer, quite simply, is no.

When looking at the possibility of our government intervening to provide a timely and effective relief strategy for high gas prices, there is virtually nothing, short of shutting down the country, that our government can do. Oh sure, they could suspend the federal gas tax for a while, but that would accomplish nothing. As shown by my Governor Jim Doyle (D-Wis.), if you pull the tax structure off gasoline, they'll just come for that money in some other manner. Wisconsin eliminated its automatic annual gas tax increase, so the good governor simply jacked us up for about 70% higher vehicle registration fees.

The government could attempt to stimulate increased refinery capacity. That might help some, but not for another ten years or so. Besides, our price at the pump is dictated by the demand for crude oil. Refinery capacity represents only a small fraction of the cost detail. Refinery capacity should be increased just as a measure of protection against extreme shortages caused by catastrophe, but as far as lowering your fuel cost in the next couple of years, new refineries mean nothing to you.

In the blistering summer heat, everyone enjoys watermelon. It was a staple during my childhood and it is one of the most fun fruits for kids to eat. Watermelon is huge, drips everywhere and you can have seed spitting contests. What's more fun for a kid than making a mess? However, if watermelon was expensive, I would have certainly grown up making a mess with other fruits.

Recently a Densuke watermelon fetched $6,100 at an auction in Japan. This is one of the most expensive melons ever sold in Japan, and I would have to imagine the rest of the world as well. At 17 pounds the cost of the fruit was about $359 per pound. I think that's more than I would fetch at an auction. For comparison, it's equivalent to 122 pounds of Godiva Dark Chocolate Truffles. This price isn't even much of a shocker for Japan where a pair of cantaloupe melons sold for $23,500 last month.

I've been actively looking for some good economic news, so I could write about something pleasant for a change, and I found something intriguing, in case any of you missed it. It's a four-day old article at the CNNMoney.com web site, but it's news that pertains to the rest of the year. While prices for about everything seem to be going up, at least one commodity is predicted to stay even and possibly drop: milk.

Why? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, milk prices shot up 12% last year, but this year, it'll hold or drop because there's been a 1.1% increase in the cow population. What's more, there's been a 1.7% growth in the average output per cow.

Now, I realize that this isn't much help when gas prices are what they are ($111 a barrel according to the most recent news), but it will help families with young children who do need to drink milk, and for impoverished families, that's indisputable good news.