The J-dogg and I went on the road to appear at another drug abuse conference today. The boy was so good with the audience of about 100 -- he ought to do public speaking for a living.
On the way home, we stopped to pick up Stacey. We were running very late and the J-dogg abandoned ship when we reached Starbucks and caught a ride from a friend to the spaghetti dinner to celebrate the successful fund-raiser for the church that hosts the AA weekend retreats every other month.
So, Stacey and I are driving home. The gas gauge on the white VW Beetle with the black "The Who" sticker on the back bumper beeps. I had been pretty good about keeping gas in the car, despite the rising cost of the precious fuel. I immediately headed for the BP station with the abusive blonde attendant. Well, not really "immediately" -- it wasn't like "BE-E-E-EP" and Pavlov's dog-like, I started to salivate and head for certain torture at the hands of that bitch behind the counter with the microphone. It was more like "BE-E-E-EP" and a voice in my ear said, "Turn left up here and go to the gas station." That was Stacey talking, so I immediately headed for the BP station with the abusive blonde attendant.
In the movie, The Road Warrior, starring Mel Gibson as the title character, the savior of a small group of people looking for peace and a better life, there's Pappagallo, a blond guy guarding the petrol -- I know I digress here, but the blonde at BP reminded me of Pappagallo -- and I just have to plug one of my all-time favorite movies.
What happened as I reached the gas station? The price of gas had actually gone down to $1.90 a gallon. The oil companies have us right where they want us now -- we are supposed to rejoice at the price decrease and be ecstatic that we are paying "only" $1.90 a gallon. That's the plan.
The record $5.4 billion in profits for ExxonMobil and the all-time quarterly high for BP Oil of $4.72 billion in the first quarter of 2004 apparently were not enough for those companies. Shell's first quarter net income was only $4.4 billion, a decrease in profits, but that "decrease" was due to accounting magic.
Posted by Bill at May 19, 2004 11:45 PMA little birdy said they dropped the price because of that email circulating telling everyone to not buy gas today. I still say that not buying gas for one day is faulty logic since your still using gas you will still have to replace it, just on a different day. I am going to start an email campaign to send $1 to a po box here where I live and in return I will call Exxon and tell them where they can stuff their oil reserves!
Posted by: Jeff A at May 20, 2004 02:30 AMIt went down here too, and I heard it was for the same reason.
Posted by: TW at May 20, 2004 12:07 PMTo answer your question--the Clorox Ready Mop is the clorox version of the Swiffer Wet Jet. Hook in the cleansing solution, put on the mop pad (looks a lot like a Kotex) and go to town. Takes me about four minutes to do the kitchen. No residue on floor or on mopper.
Posted by: TW at May 20, 2004 02:24 PMAnd ours is going up next Wednesday because the dollar is doing better. I think I will get a motorbike instead.
Posted by: Michelle at May 20, 2004 03:22 PMWe had some guy call in to the radio stations here this morning and announce that at 10 am the prices were going to be hiked 20 cents a gallon. And the DJ's said, "And he sounded in the know, so you might want to run out and get gas this morning because you know you'll need it anyway." I didn't do any checking, so I have no idea what happened at the pumps. And I'm running on empty at the moment. I prolly should have done it. But I'm kinda funny that way. I don't usually run out and do what the morning dj's tell me to do.
Posted by: Keri at May 20, 2004 11:38 PM