An Addiction and Affliction

We're a little less than a month away from Memorial Day, which in popular culture is seen as the 'unofficial start of summer.' Considering it started out as a day to honor those in all branches of the armed forces who gave their lives in defense of this country, I suppose one should be grateful for any remembrance no matter how unrelated to its inception we still have. I'm thinking of a Christmas TV spot for Mary and Joseph and their needing new snow tires on the way to Bethlehem. Blasphemy! I doubt it, ka-ching! is more like it.

Anyway, I digress. I know, 'that's news?' Getting gas the other evening, I watched a guy with a double axle pick-up truck rail against 'those greedy b'tards' for what he's paying for (I'm assuming) is diesel or high test. I've never owned a fuel pig, so I don't know what you feed them. I do know the bed of that truck was so clean you could eat off it, because I looked, which tells me his health insurance doesn't pay for penile enhancement surgery which is why he bought The Beast in the first place. Pays to advertise.

I've been here before, back in June of 2010 when I ranted and at the risk of appearing lazy, I don't think it can be said often enough so I'll say it again. When I last shopped for a car, I spent more time wondering about the leather seating than I did on the hydrocarbon emissions. Because I'm a bad person? I don't know-are you? Not really, we're just a little mutton-headed and set in our ways. Leather trim I understand, but breathing air I can't see....not so much.

Look at our coasts, north and south OR east and west. All this offshore drilling who is that for? Us or U.S., you choose. If we were being honest with one another (but we lie as often as we blink and in the blink of an eye commit atrocities against one another), we'd eliminate nozzles at gas pumps, and replace them with heavy gauge syringes so we could just mainline the oil, diesel, kerosene and gasoline, because our appetite for 'the ooze' is practically insatiable.

It's not as public decoration that those platforms and rigs ring around the coastlines or those derricks raping the landscape hammer into the earth in search of fossil fuel. It's cold, hard commerce, my brother and sister, coin of the realm. If it didn't pay, it wouldn't happen. The Oil Companies sell as much of it as they can pull from the earth, and three and a half decades or so after millions of us stood in lines on odd and even numbered days to buy gas, we are more even more dependent on the same folks who cut us off back in the day.

It's okay because here in 2012 we could kick the petrol habit at any time; assuming, of course, we all wake up tomorrow morning and are Amish. How do you bake bread anyway? Yes, I'm mocking them-it's not like they're surfing the Internet and will read this. And if they did, what's going to happen? Are they threatening to build a barn in my backyard? Don't get your shawl in a bunch, I'm kidding.

But I'm not about this: We all "would prefer" wind, solar and other alternative energy, unless it costs more than what we're paying now or involves changing (in any way) how we would prefer to live. If it does, well, sorry about the seagulls and those tarballs and fracking for natural gas and benzene in your drinking water. It is really too bad about those coastal animals in the marshlands who were destroyed, but (what's that expression I love, oh yeah) you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs (it's a fine line between free range and Free Bird).

So don't worry about the price of gasoline because we're oblivious to its true cost-until the next time we have to send 18 and 19 year old kids halfway around the world to sit on the lid of some third or fourth world garbage can of a country whose sole value to the Bastion of Democracy is they have oil. If you look really hard in the mirror you already know what we are-it's all down to agreeing on a price. And picking out who has to pay it.
-bill kenny