IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS

Just to follow up on my gas prices rant...

Two stories appeared in local papers here about gas prices, one in the college paper and one in the city paper. The college paper has this to say:

The rising cost of gas is on everyone's mind, especially student commuters.According to mississippigasprices.com, the cost of gas per gallon has risen to $2.73, compared to $2.49 in August and $1.81 at the same time last year.

The gas prices have risen almost a dollar in a year's time? Is it just me or is that a gigantic increase for a basic necessity?

Here's a quote from an official with Pine Belt Oil from the local paper:

"Some have changed on us three times a day," Ellzey said. "It's just a very unique time. The fellow that founded this company in 1967 said never in the history of the gas business has he seen anything like this."

Ellzey had no idea when gas prices might subside or if they would keep going higher.

"Who knows?" Ellzey said. "If I knew what gas was going to do tomorrow, I'd be doing something else. No one knows. It's just until they see where the supply-and-demand line crosses."

A Perfect Circle Of Bullshitting And Greed

Well, I know what gas prices are going to do--keep going up. Know what's not going up? My income. Know what's going up besides gas prices? Everything. Know why everybody says prices are going up? Because of high gas prices. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Doesn't that circle of bullshit just make you giggle your ass off?

So of course gas prices will just steadily climb upward and never downward--why would a seller lower the price of something everyone needs when they know people will pay it without rioting, like students did in Indonesia? To wit:

Some of the protesters burned tires and threw rocks at riot police who responded
by firing tear gas and warning shots into the air. More rallies were expected,
and the government deployed thousands of soldiers and police at major
intersections, the presidential palace and other strategic locations.

They did this because gas prices are going to be raised by 87%. The price increase described by the college paper I mentioned is just over 50%. Got that? We're paying over 50% more for gas this year than we were last year!

Not quite (but almost) as dramatic as 87%, so maybe we aren't quite yet inspired to throw rocks at police and burn tires, but maybe we could, I don't know...impeach Saudi handholding George W. Bush and turn out the corrupt, profiteering Republican majority in 2006? And then if it goes up any more, maybe we should gather some rocks and tires and matches...

One More Thing

And here's an interesting and heartening group of comments on an earlier story from our local paper here regarding a White House directive to get power back to a nearby pipeline before worrying about getting power back to area hospitals...

MORE KATRINA PIX

Porch underneath tree one













Hallway ceiling













Bedroom ceiling













Mom and pup in front of uprooted oak tree (given "Katrina Award")

BACK ONLINE

This is my first post-Katrina blog entry...almost a month after the storm...or a little over a month, depending on how you count.

Not much to say, except that it's nice to see Tom Delay get indicted. It's nice to be able to get online at home again.

It's not nice, however, to pay $3/gallon for gas. What is the deal with that? The reasons that I hear for it are:

1. No new refining capacity has been added in the U.S. in the last 15 years or so. OK, that may be true, but if that's a cause of high gas prices, why are they making such spectacular leaps just in the last year? Why wouldn't gas prices started rising long before now. I'm not buying that load of shitsodd.

2. Hurricane Kat-rita disrupted the supply. True, but gas prices were way off the chart--well over $2/gallon (where I live, anyway) long before the storms, so I'm not buying that excuse, either.

3. There's an increased demand for gas due to the "war on terror." The implication here is that since they're fighting terror for us, we should just be so grateful that we'll pony up any amount for gas. But haven't American troops been deployed around the world for years in the same numbers, if not the same concentration as the troops in Iraq?
Could the increased demand be from all the SUVs with yellow ribbon magnets bellowing on about how they support the troops' having to fight to keep gas available for their gas guzzlers? And all those friggin' gigantic half-ton pickups that people are driving back and forth to office jobs?

What are we gonna do about it?

KATRINA REMODELING
I had planned to do a big "return to blog hurricane experience special," but let's just say that we got a tree in our house (and all of our rent houses), we're living in our front room with a tarp over the hole (actually we just got our first blue roof yesterday--nice job, fellas) and looking to buy another house.

The days after the hurricane were actually kind of harrowing, with 5 hour lines at Walgreen's and gas pumps, ice, water and food in short supply, and lots of other stressful things. I never did much chainsawing before this happened, and I hadn't done any work on a roof in a long, long time (and never put a tarp on one before).
My parents and my friends were very helpful (dad helped tarp our roofs, mom watched our son) and we met and hung out with neighbors we'd only kind of half-waved at before.

We didn't lose everything, we're just inconvenienced for a while. So I don't want to go on and on about how horrible I think our situation is, I'll just post some pictures and let them speak for themselves.

Tree number one













Trees one and two (the second tree just grazed the south edge of the house)