Forgive me in advance for I am about to vent. Profusely. |
But first a little poetry...
Spring has sprung,
the grass has riz,
looks how high
gas prices is!
What is up with gas prices?! (They have nearly forced me to use an explative! Side tip: Here is my new "best friend" on the internet... www.gasbuddy.com.)
I recall, with some fondness (now in retrospect), grumbling more than a little over paying $1.28 in Ocean City, Maryland a few summers back when prices back home were a low $1.07! Yesterday, it was almost painful to plug the nozzle into my fuel port. Who am I kidding!? It was very painful! I swear I could "hear the quarters" hitting the bottom of my tank as the money counter seemed to roll over twice as fast as the fuel counter. I found myself paying $2.79 for the "cheap stuff"... the same stuff that was "only" $1.69 in July 2005! (Yes, I realize $2.79 is a 'basement bargain' compared to California and Europe.)
Reality check: It would now (almost) be cheaper to run my car on milk or some of those fancy bottled waters! Unfortunately, automotive technology won't allow such a flexible fuel switch.
Anybody that bought a Toyota Prius in the past two years has got to be grinning from ear to ear!
Alright... perhaps this issue affects me a little more than most of you out there. Since I travel 100 miles each day for work, I'm paying $30+ more per week than the early summer of 2005! Do the math: $30 x 52 weeks = $1560 more per year bringing my total costs over $3570. (Boy am I glad I'm not driving a gas-guzzling SUV!)
Yet market analysts say the U.S. demand for fuel is as high as ever. (Somewhere in Saudi Arabia, a sheik is buying yet another U.S. corporation to add to his real-life Monopoly portfolio... that and a fancy yatch for his yet-unborn 12th heir.)
Time for a unique spin: Imagine paying double for some of the other daily essentials. Bread $5.00. Milk $5.90. Or non-essentials: Movie Rental $8.00. Quarter pounder with cheese meal $10.50! Dinner and a movie for 2... $120+!
I wonder if we'd put up with that! (Yeah riiight!) I'm guessing there'd be boycotts and political summit meetings out the wahzoo. Yet, big oil posts their highest profits ever.
Spinning it a little harder: Imagine trying to get double your salary for what you do. They'd laugh you out of the building!
Alright, I'm done ranting now... I'm getting another kind of gas.
(Phhhtttt...urp! Excuse me!)
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EDIT (2007.05.05): It sounds like the Chinese may have this all figured out. They're going to put mining operations on the moon to harvest a special composite that gets trapped there from the sun's rays and use it to make a clean fuel with an endless supply chain. Somehow, I doubt transport from the moon to earth will be considered 'inexpensive' transportation. D'oh!
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© 2007 Landen Michaels / STRESSEDwriter
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Comments: 23
If you're interested, my humor article about this is posted at:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976954084
Most people, especially out west, have no choice other than to pay the high gas price. I had a fit when gas went from 25 cents a gallon for ethyl to over $1.00 for regular... then, another fit at $2.00... and again last year at $3.00. People have to get to work and not everyone lives anywhere remotely near mass transit, which btw imo is also way too expensive & inconvenient.
The truth is we may very well see prices soar as high as 5.00 a gallon by the end of Summer. This is because we are currently purchasing, to appease our immediate demands, from Nigeria. Which, is having some problems politically. If their political issues don't get ironed out, and it looks like this may be the case, Americans will be paying more for gas than they do for bottled water.
Factoid: we pay more for water in plastic bottles than petrol. Go figure.
Oh and another interesting factoid: Americans have not decreased their use of oil/gas. In fact our consumption has steadily risen, despite the increase in prices at the pump.
I have also noticed that everything I buy is increasing in price because people need to pass the cost of gas on to the consumer eventually. Food prices are increasing dramatically because of all the corn that is being diverted to alternative fuel too, in addition to the higher transportation costs.
I'm going to use this cost-of-living increase to fight for a better raise. Bet, I can't pull it off though. The little guy is always screwed in these situations.
I have a mid-sized SUV not because I desperately want one, but because we have kids. All of their stuff plus all of our stuff plus us = the need for a bigger car. We checked out hybrids when we were shopping for this car, but really, the mileage improvement for SUV hybrids is a complete joke. Hopefully, the technology will improve and get cheaper sooner than later. We'd have liked a hybrid, but at $11K more, we just couldn't swing the extra cost for so small a reward in fuel savings.
Thankfully, I don't work outside of the home, but I also don't bring a lot of cash in. Though what I do bring in isn't eaten up by gas. My husband, however travels about 20 miles to work. Nothing major, but it still puts a fairly large dent in our income.
I love how they blame the war in Iraq, the Saudi's, Iran etc. yet the big three oil companies posted record profits last year! Do they really think we're that stupid?
Sigh... I guess they must.