I've got your hot button issues right HERE.

I filled up my gas tank in Pasadena yesterday for SIXTY effing dollars. WHAT. THE. CRAP. I can no longer afford this. I can't see my friends as much as I used to. I miss my fun weekends of driving all over the place to experience new things. But I can't, because my already tight budget has a gasoline stranglehold on it. For those of you with trucks and SUV's, I know you have it much worse than I do. People are paying 100 bucks for a weekly fill up on their large cars. Over four hundred dollars a month...on liquified dinosaur guts refined into fuel. I was thinking about the possibility of a 100 dollar tank last night, and it actually creates real anxiety for me. What would I do if I was faced with putting a HUNDRED dollars a week into my gas tank? The thing is, that's not too far off for me and my average sized car. It's already a reality for many. And it's only supposed to get worse.

Hold on to your hats. Political tangent....

I guess we could blame the president, because that's what everyone does nowadays. It's what we do as Americans, right? I could write a whole separate rant on how our president is a convenient scape goat for much more than he needs to be in our country, but I'll just give you a condensed version of what I think on this....

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blind to our economic woes or the mismanagement of Iraq, but I think people need a reason, or something/someone to blame for when their lives end up crappy. Then it's not their fault. I'm not saying that people aren't genuinely falling on bad times caused by factors NOT created by them, because there are plenty of those stories out there in this economic climate. But it's the people that whine about trivial crap and blame it on our President without finding the real root of the problem, and it's those types of people that make me absolutely crazy.

examples:

"The pothole in our street hasn't been fixed in 3 months." Blame Bush.

"It's been raining for 5 days straight." God hates Bush, and is punishing America. And clearly it's time to build an ark.

These are extreme examples for the sake of getting my point across. The bottom line is that it's not Bush making their lives crappy, it's THEM. Decide to be happy. Decide to drive around the stupid pothole, and make a call to the city about fixing it. Decide to bring an umbrella, and be grateful for the free plant watering from mother nature. If they're going to blame someone, at least have the facts to back it up.

And maybe the whole gas thing IS Bush's mess...I don't know. What I'm trying to say is that Bush shouldn't be people's automatic answer to everything. We live in a world that is NOT black and white. It's all grey. So stop treating it like it's not. There are VERY few absolutes in this world...two sides to every story, and a different perspective on everything, and I wish people would take the time to see both sides. And if this has come off as a political rant, I didn't mean it to be. This isn't a Democrat or Republican issue. It's an issue of people being stupid. When they reduce a complicated problem down to a black and white answer, and decide to blame it on the big guy in the Oval Office, it is merely the tip of the stupid people iceberg. But, in terms of the oil crisis, you SHOULD take a look at what the president is doing about it, but then also look at the oil companies, look at the U.S. Congress, and then look at YOURSELF. Each of us have contributed to this, and I'm not immune to it either. We are an oil-addicted society. Once we've looked at all the players in this fiasco, and we still come up with Dubya as the culprit, then blame the hell out of him. What do I care? But I would bet that once you look at all the factors and players, each of them are part of the bigger problem. Again, it's not my irritation with people blaming Bush for stuff. It's more my irritation with people being stupid. That's really the problem I'm having.

So, to summarize...I hate gas and stupid people.

Back to the gas thing...today I decided that I'm going take a leap, and test the waters of the LA public transit system by taking the bus to work. I will try it for one week, and if it makes a difference, then I'm going to stick with it. Heck, I spent two years in Boston without a car, depending on public transportation to get me around...I could do it again, right? I'm going to D.C. this weekend for a few days to see family (I know, flying across the country is a huge use of oil...I told you I wasn't immune!), but when I return, the great public transportation experiment will commence. I'm sure it will create a few blog-worthy stories.

I don't know what the answer is, and I don't pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge on how to answer to such a complicated problem as the worldwide oil crisis in my silly blog. I'm just annoyed, and I want to be able to bitch about it. Gun to my head, I wouldn't be able to tell you what OPEC even stands for. I'd probably tell you that it stood for Old People Eating Cheese. Of course, if I actually had a GUN to my head, I wouldn't think of much...I would opt for crapping my pants instead.

Please don't give up on me. I promise future posts will be more lighthearted, and this won't turn into a socio-political blog. I just had to get this out. And a good day to you all.