The gas rant

Man, filling up my car has become a bitch. The other day, I had to pay 16 bucks more than what I paid last week for the same amount of gas. Thats like almost an extra hundred bucks out of my wallet a month.

And you can sense it on the highways too. People drive slower now because apparently a car gives better mileage at a speed of about 60 mph. But here's the thing. If you drive at 60, the guy behind you is gonna drive at 59, the one behind him 58, and so on and so forth till the person a 100 cars behind you is going 50 miles in the opposite direction. You see what I'm saying? So please, dear gas economizer, fuck science, just this once. Just do a respectable 75 like a normal human being.

And whats with the fucking cop prowling around during rush hour? As it is, everyone's doing like 40, there's no road space available for speeding even if one wanted to. The only thing he achieves is making everybody nervous, and the last thing you want during rush hour is a bunch of nervous people looking in their rear view mirrors for flashing lights, not paying attention to the car in front. And boy oh boy, how I adore the guy in front of me who is already doing a measly 40 mph in a 55 mph zone, and then he sees a cop car parked on the shoulder and slows down to 20. I mean, what the fuck is with that? It's not like the cop's gonna give him a certificate for being extra safe or something. And then there are the brainless retards who slow down to watch someone being pulled over on the other side of the road, causing a traffic backup on this side. How fucking starved of entertainment do you have to be to find the spectacle of a man getting ticketed by a cop enthralling? Jesus Christ, how about getting out more often?

I'm sure that the rising gas prices have given an impetus to the adulteration industry. When gas reached it's post-hurricane peak, my car suddenly began to give a lesser mileage. I could almost imagine someone sitting in Hackensack, New Jersey with a barrel of light crude, a barrel of Dr Pepper and mixing them together in the prescribed adulteration proportion. All I know is that my fuel gauge is acting weird, sometimes even swinging from one end to the other in a matter of seconds like a female on PMS.

You know what they say, you learn a lot about a man by how he handles himself in times of adversity. The same goes for your car too. The other day I stopped at a McD's drive through. There was a line, so I switched off my car to save gas. When the car in front of me moved, instead of switching it on and wasting fuel, I let gravity work for me and slowly rolled up to the ordering post. But goddamn, when I tried to brake or steer the car, both of them suddenly locked up and I found myself drifting towards the wall with no control over my car. If I hadn't had the presence of mind to pull my hand brake, I would probably have ended up in the kitchen. It was only later that I came to know that the hydraulic steering and brakes only work if the car is switched on. Who the fuck knew? I guess everyone except me.

But gas prices are dropping now, or so they say. And what intrigues me is all these rises and falls in the gas price are based on speculation. If someone "feels" or "has an inkling" that the oil barons in the middle east are going to suck out more gas from the ground, gas prices fall, even though there is no oil actually being sucked out at the present time. And if someone "feels" or "has an inkling" that people are going to travel more on the weekend, gas prices rise, even though no one has actually travelled yet. Yeah, yeah thats how it works I know. That's why it is called speculation. But where I come from, it's called spreading rumors. But my question to oil company executives is, why should it always have to be about your feelings? Aren't my feelings important too? Why can't I go to a gas station tomorrow and pay a lower price on the gas because I "feel" that tomorrow they are going to come out with a new fuel substitute derived from human hair? Why oh why can't I do that?