Column: Not Quite Nietzsche; It all comes down to gas prices
I watched “Rebel Without a Cause” this week, and was impressed with its adolescent anguish, its dramatic quality, and most of all with its big cars.
There’s nothing that dates a movie more than the muscle car. Knife fights that look like “West Side Story,” soundtracks that would be at home on “The Undersea World of Jacque Cousteau,” and a twenty-four year old James Dean trying to pass as a seventeen year old are all pretty bad, but they hold nothing to huge cars and whitewall tires.
Gas prices are up again, and that means I can barely look at a bicycle without cringing with the thought of what I’m spending in gas. I am convinced that the Biblical reminder “Man shall not live by bread alone” has direct reference to our dependence on crude oil. Not one to stand against such honored teachings, I’ve started to cut costs in other, less essential areas like my food budget and heating bill.
This time around, prices are up due to tensions over Iran’s planned nuclear weapons tests. I don’t know what nuclear holocaust is like, but can’t imagine it being much worse than the $2.50 gallon of gas that’s just around the corner.
We’re all to blame. How many times have you seen Green Peace bumper stickers on SUVs and cars that look like they’re barely functioning let alone passing emissions? In fact, I think those two vehicles are the only ones that serious environmentalists drive. But I’m not in a place where I can point the finger.
This week I managed to turn one visit worth of shopping into three separate trips to Wal-Mart as I became increasingly involved in and frustrated with a project to hang my computer monitor from the wall. First for a stud finder, second for some sheetrock patching stuff to fill the holes the stud finder caused me to erroneously drill, and lastly to find out if there were any over-the-counter stress medications.
There aren’t any, but if gas prices keep going up, or if you’re thinking of mounting your computer monitor to your wall, you may want to visit a doctor and get a preemptive prescription.
What I’m saying is that I can’t help but wonder if the exorbitant gas prices are less about Iran and more about the copious amounts of gas that are going to be consumed during the next three day weekend. It’s a shame that there isn’t a trans-Atlantic highway, because I’d love to drive to the next OPEC meeting and ask for a little leniency. The free market economics that are driving all of this gas business are seriously impairing my freedoms.
That’s the real difference between James Dean and I. It isn’t a cool factor, it isn’t the decades between us, and it isn’t even his deft ability to stage fight with a knife-it all comes down to gas prices. I can’t afford to leave my house with anything other than my twelve speed, and under those circumstances James Dean would have stopped being a rebel without a cause and ended up acting in “The Sandlot.”
So while I’m still not completely sure about the causes of this most recent gas hike, I am all too aware of its effects on my social habits. But not anymore. So if you are a single female with a love for aspiring newspaper columnists and tandem bikes, drop me a line. We can go to the pumps, sniff gas, and reminisce about the good old days.
-Zach Pendleton is a junior majoring in English. Send any comments or questions to zpendleton@cc.usu.edu