Wordless Wednesday
Monthly Archives: June 2015
It’s a Gas!
Hillary2.0 began the first rally of her campaign with a sharp attack on Republicans. “There may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir,” she said. “But they’re all singing the same old song.”
Would those lyrics be “Dem policies cost too much, cost too much!”?
I drove the east coast last week, right through the heart of red states and blue states.
The cheapest gas I saw was in South Carolina at $2.339.
Prior to the 1960s, Democrats were “firmly in control of the government of South Carolina at all levels. The state Republican Party was little more than a country club group… [but] from 1964 to present, the Republican Party has gradually gained strength and by the 1990s it became the dominant party of the state.”
It turns out that the Hillary constituency digs deeper at the gas pump than most North Puffin Perspective™ readers. Drivers in Santa Barbara, for example, pay 75 cents more per gallon than drivers in Tulsa, OK. The pattern repeats in all the liberal strongholds from the Left Coast where gas prices are on the wrong side of $3.50 per gallon to New England and the Northeast where $3 per gallon is the rule. The solid Republican regions across the Midwest and South have the nation’s lowest prices, well below $2.50 per gallon.
On my road trip last week, I paid more for gas in the Peoples’ Republic of Vermont than in the Keys. In fact, I paid more for gas in Vermont than in any other state.
Florida $2.639 (in the Keys)
Georgia $2.459
South Carolina $2.339
Virginia $2.499
Pennsylvania $2.799 at the Sunoco at Davisville Road (I didn’t buy any)
New Jersey $2.429 (the attendant pumped it and washed my windshield)
New York Northway $2.839
Vermont $2.839
Blown away I was when I saw the price at the pump over the bridge in Vermont was exactly the same as the price in New York State. I drove into Vermont on fumes because I refused to pay that New York price.
New York stations have always charged a dime or two more than Vermont stations because New York gas taxes total 62.9 cents per gallon but Vermont gets “only” 48.9 cents per gallon. Now that extra 14 cents is going straight into gouging in an oh-so-very liberal state but that’s another story.
As a general rule of thumb, every penny we save on a gallon of gasoline results in about $1 billion of money that you and I can spend on stuff. That’s not trivial, even when all the 140-ish million U.S. car owners have to split it. Let me do the math for you. A penny puts seven bucks in your pocket if you drive an average number of miles. I get more because my truck gets lousy mileage. A dime at the pump gets us $71 each. A dollar difference at the pump means my road trip from South Puffin to North Puffin cost me $100 less.
One hundred dollars.
So, here’s the $64 question: Why do liberals vote against their own self interest, let alone against yours and mine? I mean does the liberal really like paying more for gasoline and food and doctoring and taxes and Kool Aid™?
Wordless Wednesday
The Seven Words I Can’t Use Anymore
(And It Makes Me Mad)
Boy.
Guys.
Lady.
Gentleman.
Old.
Gay.
Before any impressionable younger (experience-challenged) readers get excited, none of these are the seven words that once upon a time could not be repeated on television. I’m not sure if this is a lament for the natural mutation of language or an ode to a politically correct lexicon. You decide.
There is one other caveat. Correctness is in a terrible state of flux. By the time this column appears, all the words may have changed again. Bomb shelters (underground symbols of the fearful manipulation of other-thinking nations) became swimming pools (environmentally appropriate aquatic exercise centers) a few decades ago. The millenial milestone (measured from a date Before the Current Era) has passed. Today that tumult has turned inward. Today we might hear a gentleman with a conservative agenda called a fossilized futzwuffle by a lady of a liberal persuasion. Does that mean the lady is a tramp? This column may cook my personal goose.
Ed Note: some of the names have been changed
to protect privacy. The street names haven’t.
Gay Lombard was a high school classmate. She lived up to her name: cheerful, engaging, involved in good works. The main intersection in a small Pennsylvania city is the corner of High and Gay. Except the long blue nose of Standards and Practices hasn’t allowed us to get higher since Ed Sullivan presented the Doors.
Gay was once a delightful word but because kindergartners titter, certain congressmen grow red faced, and most others with the mentality of five-year-olds get flustered when they hear it, many of us have forsaken gaiety. That’s a loss to Mr. Penn’s sylvan commonwealth, to Ms. Lombard, and to the language.
Vermont now has two cool “oldies” stations. One, serving the Champlain Valley, doesn’t quite reach our friends in North Puffin, but does play neat car tunes for them whenever they drive south of the county seat. The North Country station hits every hill and valley in the county, giving folks less reason to travel. Oldie in this sense is, of course, merely a statement of chronology that relates solely to the musical era of the baby boomers. My dad thinks oldies means big bands, but we can’t convince any radio magnates of that, so he suffers through the Beatles, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Sensations. We who grew up as musically challenged baby boomers enjoy the tunes. No one over the age of five would dream of using the word to describe anything (or anyone) calendar-measurement challenged. Not even my mom who complains whenever I have a birthday.
The oldies station played the O’Kaysions’ I’m a Girl Watcher. One of the songs of the sixties with the usual intricate melody and complex lyrics:
“I’m a girl watcher.
“I’m a girl watcher.
“Watchin’ girls go by.
“My my my.”
Liz Arden scowled at me again recently for describing a colleague as “the tall girl with gray hair.”
My mom always joined the “gals” (her word, not mine) for bridge club. Your dad went out with the boys. Although mine are in their seventies (persuns-of-a-chronologically-advanced-stature), they can’t use those terms either. And the word cop best not catch us calling them oldies.
What to do? I teach a college course most semesters. Since I enlighten male and female students alike, I need an acceptable device showing my thoughtfulness when addressing the entire class. “Girls” obviously fails. “Boy” is perhaps worse. I thought guys might work, as in, “Hey guys. May I have your attention?” Honk! Wrong answer.
They told me Youse guys would be all right if I could fake a Brooklyn accent.
I suppose we could rewrite the song:
“I’m a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer, which is not to demean those who
watch persuns-of-the-XY-chromosome-persuasion
or those who don’t watch anybody at all on the
principle that the least eye contact with an
individual’s shadow invades the shadow’s domain.“I’m a persun-of-the-XX-chromosome-persuasion
observer except for ignoring those persuns
who fear the least shadowy eye contact.“Watchin’ persuns of any chromosomal variance go by.
“Huh huh huh?”
Do you think that changes the melody, too?
It occurs to me, in these days of political correctivity, that if boys weren’t girl watchers and girls weren’t boy watchers, there would be darned few hupersuns here to watch.
Editor’s Note: This column first appeared in the Burlington Free Press in 1996. I have made only minor updates.
Wordless Wednesday
