Learning to Cope with the New Status Quo
Posted on | August 17, 2005 at 6:00 pm | 10 Comments
Gack, I’m suffering. I hate summer colds, yet I always seem to get one. Here’s a little something I whipped up in my misery.
25 Ways in Which Higher Gas Prices Have Changed Me:
- No longer taking the long way to work that goes past the aerobics studio with the huge glass window in front.
- Flying to Glenwood Springs for vacation instead of driving the 150 miles.
- Avoiding neighbors when walking around neighborhood so I don’t have to explain why I’m carrying a gas can and siphon hose.
- Looking into moving to NYC so I never have to drive again.
- Thinking about reporting my dad to DMV for bad driving so he’ll lose his license and have to give me his Prius.
- Waiting until wind is blowing towards office before departing for work.
- Putting Abba tunes on my iPod to play for scary guy on bus so he doesn’t beat me up and I can use mass transit in peace.
- Experimenting with turning my bodily wastes into bio-fuels.
- Cloning velociraptors in my home lab and burying them in the backyard.
- Actually slowing down for speed bumps and school zones, since driving slower saves gas.
- Turned in job application at local Subway so I can have a job where I walk to work.
- Renewed dieting/exercise effort so car doesn’t have to lug extra dead weight.
- Volunteering time to “Jimmy Carter Energy Crisis II 2008″ campaign.
- Stopping at both crack house and brothel on same trip instead of two separate trips.
- Less nose-picking while stopped at stoplight, to prevent distractedly increasing idling time.
- Stop hiring neighborhood kids and/or helper monkeys to tune-up car – use professionals instead.
- More honking and flipping off of slow drivers who are causing traffic to back up.
- Buying more groceries (mostly Pop Tarts and headcheese) so I can get the Safeway fuel discount.
- Considering carpooling to work with unattractive co-workers, not just attractive ones.
- Encouraging family to hold birthday celebrations at local dive bar (”Sticky’s”) so I don’t have to drive across town.
- Downloading more pornography so I don’t have to drive to video store.
- Formulating new Mideast policy that’s based on trading cute little puppies & kittens for oil.
- Telling women that I want ask out that they have really cool cars compared to mine.
- Hitching a ride with Green Lantern to Justice League meetings. Flying over the city in a big green bubble is the coolest!
- Driving all over town looking for gas station with lowest prices.
Latre.
Category: Personal
Comments
10 Responses to “Learning to Cope with the New Status Quo”
August 17th, 2005 @ 8:13 pm
Hey, you can also move to super-cool, public-transit Boston — I haven’t driven in 9 years and don’t miss it. (Though I do like your velociraptor idea.)
Even though it makes most people hate me, I think gas prices should be way higher. Like Europe higher. Maybe it’s too Pollyanna of me to think that throttling gas consumption would have any bearing on the current war and general US fuel-gluttony, but the car-culture suburban-sprawl has got to end.
August 17th, 2005 @ 8:44 pm
I would have to move to some place like Boston if the prices go much higher! Mass transit around Denver ain’t all there (yet).
Eventually technology will find a way around the fuel problem, but will it be in time?
August 18th, 2005 @ 6:41 am
No, almost by definition. The energy companies won’t pay more than lip service to moving away from fossil fuels until it’s (short term) economically more viable for them to do so.
I s’pose there’s some opportunity for nimble little companies to challenge the titans with alternative tech, but unless the gov’t reverses itself on funding alternative energy research, it’s gonna be one hell of an uphill battle.
August 18th, 2005 @ 9:42 am
Yeah, it’s not like this administration is going to do anything real about it.
This article is pretty scary.
August 18th, 2005 @ 12:41 pm
To my mind, this is the great failing of 21st (and late 20th) century capitalism: the market puts pressure on corporations to maximize short term returns, which means that most publicly held companies are unable to pursue strategies that are unprofitable for a finite amount of time in order to become extremely profitable in the longer term. Too many people are thinking in terms of quarters (or, heaven help us, days) and too few are thinking in terms of years, let alone decades.
Thanks for fixing my sloppy tagging above, btw.
August 18th, 2005 @ 1:04 pm
There was an article in the paper this morning about a guy who just bought a Hummer and said he’d economize somewhere else — he just REALLY wanted a Hummer, dammit. Public transit ridership has only gone up 1-2% despite the $3 gas prices here. Meanwhile, AC Transit (local bus co.) is boosting its base fare from $1.50 to $1.75…
August 18th, 2005 @ 1:12 pm
Agreed, doug. There is no long-terming planning anymore. Seems to be that way in the government as well (despite the noise the administration is making about social security and such). Everyone in power wants to make their mark right away, and screw the future.
August 18th, 2005 @ 1:13 pm
Sue, I can’t imagine owning a Hummer with gas prices the way they are. Nevertheless, an ex-coworker of mine just bought an H3. He does say it gets better gas mileage than his monster pickup.
August 19th, 2005 @ 3:17 am
The first time I saw a stretch Humvee (in Denver), I said to the person next to me “The gas mileage on that thing must be a negative number!” Now I see them literally every day. I’m waiting to see my first stretch Mini Cooper, or even a stretch Harley…
My elderly Honda Civic used to get 40mpg in town, in Denver. For some reason it gets about 30mpg in LA, and that’s if I’m using the highways a good chunk of the time, which is often not the case. Good thing I usually don’t have to drive much. Gas is about $3/gal here. Thank heaven we took over an oil-rich country or just think how bad it’d be…
August 19th, 2005 @ 1:55 pm
Right – because the reason the oil companies took over the oil-rich country is so they could gift us with divinely low prices. (Note: Firefox detected missing plugin “Sarcasm.” Click here to install missing plugin)
I’m trying to imagine ways the guy who just “had to have a Hummer” will economize (and geez, why is it almost always guys who “have to have Hummers”? NB: no dirty jokes). He’ll drive to work in a straight line instead of using all those fuel-wasting, indirect streets with their right angles and curves? He’ll no longer stop for objects, vehicles, and pedestrians in his path, since it uses more fuel to accelerate than to hold one’s speed steady? Really: having to buy a Hummer is rather like wearing a neon sign that flashes “I am an insecure asshole with erectile dysfunction but too much disposable income.”