Thinking Thoughtful Thoughts, or So I Thought... I Think...

The recent outrageous spike in gasoline prices has got me thinking…no, not about knocking over a bank or forging lottery tickets, but about what the oil companies think they’re doing.

Maybe I’m a graduate candidate for the Bumblebrain School of Economics, but it would seem to me that, in this burgeoning green climate of petroleo-electric hybrid vehicles and the looming advent of practical hydrogen fuel cell technology, the oil companies would be competing for market share by lowering the price of gas. Granted, there’s the whole supply-and-demand ethic at work, and deeper thinkers than I remind me that the oil suppliers – meaning the OPEC – are the ones who set the prices for crude oil, and the rest of us demanders pay accordingly down the line, the recent record profits of the American oil refining companies notwithstanding.

This spike in prices has me thinking the oil companies – the producers as well as the refiners – realize the jig is up. I think they think the world is at the edge of the abyss, looking down into the limitless expanse of alternatives for fueling our world that don’t include crude oil, and it’s more than willing to leap. And the oil companies are trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the consumers that they can before the cows come home to roost.

That, or they’ve seen the bottom of the barrel, so to speak, and are padding their futures before they leave the world dangling in the breeze….

(Oooh! Hey! Bank.... Lottery tickets.... Hmmmm....)


Dad Update
On Tuesday April 22, Dad moved out of the nursing home and into the Illinois Veteran’s Home, in Manteno, about 50 miles south of downtown Chicago, straight down Interstate 57. Not like he did the moving, however, as he was transferred from bed to chair, wheeled into a medi-van, driven to the new place, wheeled in for a medical evaluation, and then transferred to bed. All in all, it was a tiresome day for him.

In the same move one of my fears was unrealized while a co-related fear was fulfilled: when my sister announced about a month ago that Dad would be moved on April 22, I feared that he would not make it to that day, and would die without the comfort (as we perceived it) of being surrounded by men of his generation who share a significant life experience, and who might be able to bring a modicum of emotional comfort and camaraderie to his last days. I also feared he would survive, and thus prolong the misery of his worn out, useless body, the agony of the decay eating him alive from the inside.

But he is still with us. For that, selfishly, I can be happy.


Rope-a-Mope
Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life resenting the who that I am not, who could’ve kept either of the two women I have loved with my whole being from divesting themselves of me? Does everyone who has let a good thing get away go through the same thing I am going through? Or am I just a terminal mope?

Did I fuck up the only real chances I had, or have I still yet to find “the one?”

Does this section even make sense?


Joy
What can better describe the meaning of the word ‘joy’ than this?



Nothing, that’s what!


(Okay... Just so any cat people don't feel left out....

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