Oh, How We Really Need That Gas & Oil!

As I was driving down the street on Tuesday morning (yesterday), heading toward work, fashionably late, I might add, I passed the two gas stations on the corner I always pass by, a Marathon & the other a Shell & then I noticed something odd; both had the same prices for gasoline, $2.35! $2.35! One might think that if you were competing for a potential customer, you’d change your gas prices just a touch or offer free stuff to bring them in by the butt-load.

In all honesty, however, have you noticed how much gas prices have jumped lately in the last few days for those of you who live in major metropolitan area? Only four days ago (Sunday) I paid $2.19 per gallon. Four days ago and just like out of nowhere, wham! Boom! Slam! The price skyrockets like scalped tickets to a Chicago Cubs World Series game!

Now I realize that’s pretty high for some of you other folks who live elsewhere, but here in the Chicago-land area, it’s about the average. But as I have driven throughout the city and the surrounding suburbs, I’ve noticed the difference slightly. It runs pretty evenly from $2.23-$2.60 per gallon, but you know what the funniest part of all this is? People are just accepting it at face value without so much as a gripe or complaint.

When this first start occurring over the past several months, everyone from Joe Citizen to United States Congressmen were up in arms at what they called price-gouging. Some years ago, whenever I traveled to San Francisco or Los Angeles, I always notice the gasoline prices were higher than $3, yet this was back in the 1990s & it seemed acceptable then, but why not now?

If you ask me, I think it’s a God-damned crime against America & its citizens. What this price-gouging does in the long run is pinch us most where it hurts, straight in the wallet or pocketbook. It may seem like nothing shelling out a few more cents here or there, but it adds up throughout the year to spending a couple hundred more than you planned to ever spend on gasoline.

This oil industry seems to thrive & hang onto every single solitary word our honest president and his pet terrorists, I mean his cabinet members & the Washington-DC based federal organizations like say the FBI say, like for example a terrorist threat is upon us yet again; did the threat of terrorism ever go away?

Have you noticed that whenever there is a terrorist alert or a possible terrorist threat that the first thing to go up is gasoline prices? It’s all done for our purpose they tell us, as they continue to siphon our hard-earned dollars away from us, while trying to scare us into thinking that without warning, oil & gas will become as scarce as two-dollar bills.

And speaking of terrorist alerts, have you noticed that the color-coded terrorist alert chart seems to have vanished in thin air? It is funny what an election will do to people if you scare them enough, but I’m rambling.

The traders on Wall Street sure know how to put a scare & a spin into the stableness of the economy when it comes to rising gas prices; they just panic about the future & sell it off washing their hands clean of the situation, thereby making the rest of us feeling paranoid.

So what should we be doing to counter this situation? Fight back! Make gasoline stations feel the hurt back & boycott your favorite station for a while; go elsewhere to get your gasoline, look for cheaper prices. Believe me, there are lots of cheaper places to find gas at. Avoid gas stations that are near interstates however, as they tend to gouge the prices silly.

You can also abandon your car & take public transportation or ride your bike to work. Or walk to work if you’re close enough. But if you’re like most folks, and almost absolutely have to drive to work, here are four tips you might be able to use, in order to save on using gasoline:

1: Empty your trunk. A trunk laden down with too many items will add up on the weight of your car, thereby giving you greater risk of losing gasoline at a much quicker pace. It sounds trivial and miniscule, but believe me the more you throw in your trunk, the more gasoline your car loses.

2: Don’t play the radio or your cassette/CD player everyday. Let it breathe a bit.

3: Roll down your windows & turn off the air conditioner. It’s kind of nice when you’re driving & you get to hear the beauty of sound that surrounds you.

4: Carpool. You can either advertise at work by posting a sign on your bulletin boards or post it on the website, www.craigslist.org. Who knows? You might make a couple of new friends!

If you come across other ideas, let me know & email them to me at the email address posted in my profile. Together as a community we can send these gas-gouging bastards packing!