Gas Pains
On every channel tonight, the 10 o'clock news is talking about gas prices. They also mention the guy who tried to sky dive off the Empire State Building this afternoon, but mainly, they talk about gas prices.
Nothing could annoy me more. Except maybe when people whistle in enclosed spaces. Like an elevator, for example. Unless you're Bing Crosby, whistling is terrible anytime. But when I have to go 14 floors listening to you whistle to yourself while checking your Blackberry, I'm about to go into Punching Mode.
Anyway, each news team does the ubiquitous "man on the street interviews," where, invariably, everyone says, "This is terrible! Something has to be done about this. Someone should do something."
Excuse me, Joe Hummer H2, why don't you do something? Nobody forced you to buy a giant and garish automobile and move 50 miles away from your place of work. Just like bobody forced you to purchase that awful lime green polo shirt you're wearing with your reflective sunglasses.
In New Jersey, they are thinking about "taking active measures" to "solve the gas problem." After cutting to shots of beleaguered folks paying for their gas, they reveal these active measures:
1) Allow people to pump their own gas (I know, what? I guess in New Jersey you don't pump your own gas. Which might not be a bad idea seeing as how I have sprayed myself with gasoline several times. Once just because I wasn't paying attention and once because I thought I saw somebody I knew and yanked the hose out while still squeezing it).
2) Lower the speed limit.
Now, believe in or not, I'm no economist. In fact, I don't even have a degree in the stuff. But I'm pretty sure neither of those things are really going to bring us back to our heyday, when gas was so cheap we bought it just to pour it out in the streets, or to bathe our dogs, or to put a dab behind our ears to drive the men crazy.
Not that it affects me much, seeing as how I kissed driving goodbye almost a year ago, except for the brief driving lesson in Italy where Franco tried to teach me to drive a stick-shift in his 1989 pick-up truck on a winding mountain road. The lesson was brief and ended in extreme sweating and nervous crying. For both of us.
It just annoys me to hear people bitch about problems that "need to be solved" when they're really not doing anything to solve the problem for themselves. It would be like me complaining to my mother that I keep getting nosebleeds when really, like Ralph Wiggum, all I gotta do is stop picking the damn thing. But more than anything, I just want the local news to go back to tackling the real issues. Like a viewer's poll about the latest American Idol cast-off.
Sure, maybe Joe Hummer H2 is not blameless, but what about those people who WERE forced to buy giant and garish automobiles and move 50 miles away from their place of employment? Perhaps even at gunpoint. Can't we do something to help them? I mean, that would totally suck if someone forced me to do that.
GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE!
nothing, not the blood of iraqi children, not new jersites getting calluses from pumping their own gas, not mad max going beyond thunderdome, will stop me from getting my canyonero! "Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!"
Maybe I ought to retire my gas guzzling Tahoe and return to my roots via The 1974 Bug that I still have in storage. Back in the day when it was my main car, my only concerns were where to buy lead additive and how far I could go while on E before really running out of gas. Back then, it ran me a whopping $8 to fill the tank. Now, it might top out around $20, which beats my current best of $68 for the Tahoe. When it gets cold here, I'd have to put it back in storage because when you turn on the heat it smells so bad in the car you have to roll down the windows. But until then, I could do my part.
Do you think it's safe for children to ride in it? I know that my parents had a bug when we were kids, but I don't even think we were required to ride in car seats then.
This post is making me feel old.
I think you should look into a car that runs on a renewable resource. Like Martin's cuteness. It's risky, sure, because if he hits and awkward phase you're stranded. But think of the mileage you'd get out of his "I'm a cooker!" routine.
I can tell you about gas pains!