Get used to it!

So what if the average price of gasoline is over $2.00 in the U.S.! Newspapers are reporting shock and outrage that for the first time, gasoline prices in the U.S. are beginning to approach a fraction of what gas costs in other countries! How can this be? When I lived with Damian in Britain, we paid over $6 a gallon for gasoline. How did we survive, you ask? Well, we didn't drive no fucking Escalade, that's for sure. He had a fuel-efficient little puddle-jumper that got us from A to B, and when we could, we took the bus, the train, or walked. But that's soooo Old Europe. Americans can't live that way! It's contrary to our way of life, our manifest destiny! It's such a big country, there's so much space, we're destined to fill it with our fat bodies.

Frankly, I'm happy to see gas prices go up, though I'm dismayed that gas gluttony is so ingrained in our culture that even John Kerry is calling for cheaper gas. By calling George Bush a fuck-up over the matter he seems to be echoing the secret outrage in the rest of us: why the fuck did we just fight a war in Iraq??? Though of course we couch such truths in language about protecting working families. So wedded are we to our vehicles (and the dream of perpetual cheap petrol) that an article I read last week suggests that a surge in sales at discount food outlets is pinned to the rise in gas. Yes, we'd rather eat shitty processed food than drive less.

I hope gas prices stay high, and people realize that maybe it doesn't make sense to buy gas guzzling SUVs or live fifty miles from the workplace. You people want your thirsty hemis and your ribbons of ring roads, you can pay for it in more expensive gas (and I'll pay too, in more expensive groceries and the occasional meal out in gratitude for Aaron's trips to the airport to pick me up). Hey, it's a beautiful day out. Get on a bike.