That’s right. You heard me. Not on my watch!
What am I talking about? oil, man! OIL!
I realized yesterday that I am getting just a little bit tired of all of those nattering-nabobs of negativism in the media (I’m talkin’ about you Friedman!) chattering on and on about America’s oil dependency. Everyone nowadays seems to think that it would be better for oil prices to keep skyrocketing so that Americans can finally ween themselves off of that addictive “malignant molasses,” sweet crude.
Why is it that MY generation must be the one to sacrifice financial well-being for the environmental future?
Why must I be the one to pay $137.82 for a Sonic Cherry Limeade just because I don’t want to turn my air conditioning off while waiting for Jesse, the part-time Community College Student and full time waitress, to hand me the a Vanilla Limeade which just happens to be the drink ordered by the Mr. T-looking dude in the black van across the parking lot who just happens to be glaring at me ’cause I am yelling at Jesse through the closed window of my air-conditioned car trying to explain that the drink tastes an awful lot like vanilla—all the while keeping an eye on Colonel Decker as he screams down the street in his antiquated Army jeep hell bent on capturing the man accused of a crime he didn’t commit?
I get the sense, sipping my cool beverage while watching Face-man peel out in a cloud of smoke, that something distinctly un-American is going on here.
First, Mr T. didn’t get his Vanilla Limeade.
Second, gas costs way too much these days.
As I look out on the street, I notice Baby Boomer after Baby Boomer drive by in their gas-guzzling Cadillac Behemoths—just like the ones they have driven throughout their entire adult lives. I turn to ask Jesse as she skates gracefully by and ask, “Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?” Indeed there is. Suddenly, in the prime of my money-making life, I am asked to suck down a precipitous increase gas prices along with a commensurate drop in discretionary income in order to make America, quote “a better place”. How, you ask? By giving the government more of my tax money so it can piss it away by building Public Transportation Infrastructure.
Well, my friends, I have seen the public transportation future and it sucks. . . .Even countries that does it well can’t get past the rising ticket prices, public drunkenness, annoying crowds, hectic scheduling and the occasional suicide delay. The way I see it, rising gas prices aren’t a problem of not enough oil, but of too much consumption. There are simply too many people driving cars in China and India. The solution?—Irish Children.
Barring that, however, the only other solution I can see are age restrictions on older drivers. Baby Boomers are wedded to their precious gas-guzzlers, ergo, make all of THEM start using public transportation. Let’s see how long all of this oil-intervention-tax-hoopla lasts when aging hipsters have to stand in the roasting sun for a bus that may never come right next a guy who hasn’t bathed since the Carter administration!
I pity the fool!
