Rising Gas Prices

We have a new addition to the fatalistic phrase “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
Now we can amend the idiom to read “Nothing is certain except death, taxes, and rising gas prices.”
The price of a gallon of gasoline has been steadily climbing for months, with plenty of economists (aka “price tag fortune tellers”) predicting that the prices this summer will be even higher.
This week’s explosion at a BP gasoline refinery in Texas guarantees that the price of gasoline will basically equal the amount paid for a gallon of Jim Beam at your nearest liquor store.
The good news is that this pricing parity is sure to cut down on drunk driving, as those who are forced to choose between the two liquids will certainly select the bourbon.
A gallon of gas may get you to the other side of town.
A gallon of good bourbon can get you to the other side of the cosmos.
Besides, when the gas is gone, you just have an empty gas tank.
When the bourbon is gone, you often have new stories to tell that begin with “you’re not going to believe this,” a pretty clear bottle you can fill with colored water as a dining table centerpiece (yes, I was once a bachelor living with another hetero bachelor, and this was a part of our décor), and extra pairs of underwear you can’t explain, although you now have a new indentation in your forehead that says “Hanes” when you look in the mirror.
Drivers today are like the cigarette smokers of the eighties.
These are the folks who said “when cigarettes reach $2 a pack, I’m going to quit,” then “when cigarettes reach $3 a pack, I’m going to quit,” then $4, $5, etc.
Some of the hard-core smokers whose cigarette habits have resulted in their being evicted from the office, forced out of California bars, banned from all restaurants in Utah, and even exiled from their own living rooms by reformed non-smoking spouses, are still offering up that weak promise.
“When cigarettes reach $80 a pack, I’m going to quit.”
American drivers are the same way, according to recent reports.
The surge in gas prices hasn’t dissuaded drivers from cruising their gas guzzling SUVs to the supermarket to pick up that 12-pack of Q-tips, or driving to their mailbox a half block away.
The obsession with consuming vast quantities of fossil fuels to feed our octane addiction is approaching crack head proportions.
It doesn’t get any better when you consider our main-line dope dealers are swarthy turbaned men from the Middle East who would rather see us dead, but just can’t turn down the cash and long-term entertainment of watching our country sell our collective grandmothers for just one more hit of mid-grade, or “87” as it’s known in the streets.
Just like the never-ending supply of cocaine which pours across our borders each day, no amount of government suggestion or intervention is going to stop America’s craving, for as long as there is a demand, there will be a country willing to provide it.
Our only hope is that the Columbian cartels will become so furious with their shrinking profits when customers use perfectly good drug money to buy gas for their Honda Civics that the drug lords will declare war on the Middle East.
Or that they can invent a car that runs on bourbon.