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ah, memorial day…

…the unofficial start of the summer where we remember those who fell in defense of america’s freedom and/or ramming america’s version of democracy down the throats of those who didn’t want it in the first place by throwing dead animals on a fire pit, get hammered, and spike our gas prices.

let’s address those in order.

i don’t grill on memorial day. same for labor day or july 4th. i don’t do this for the same reason i don’t get shit-faced on st. patrick’s or new year’s eve – it’s amateur hour. the people that don’t NORMALLY grill (or drink) do it up on those days and typically don’t do it as professionally (or as well) as me. i leave those days to them. with my current unemployment status i can be shitfaced and making a killer steak at the same time at 2pm on any given thursday.

and usually, i am. but never mind that now.

same reason i don’t typically get shitfaced hammered on memorial day – it’s been done. a lot. if i get pulled over on my way back from some memorial day event it is NOT gonna be so they can chalk up another d.w.i. statistic for the weekend. speeding? indecent exposure from getting oral in an open convertible? all possible – but d.w.i.? oh, HELL no…

…and speaking of the car, i have a news flash:

you know where they WON’T be bar-b-quing and drinking it up this weekend? saudi arabia, where our oil comes from – so since they DON’T recognize the holiday, why has gas creeped up from below two bucks to around two-fifty in the last month?

i’ll tell ya…

because the REAL principle of our “democracy” (in quotes for good reason) is “keep ’em watching the left hand so they don’t realize what the right hand is doing”. in this case, we’re focusing on the jobless rates, and foreclosures (i might get to be a DUAL statistic!) and what not and we don’t notice that gas prices, for no reason, are starting to rise again. don’t get me wrong – when they dropped from almost five bucks a gallon to damn near a buck we knew it had to equalize eventually – and if you didn’t you just have issues. sure, with what crude SHOULD be going for it should be low, etc, etc. i read the journal, too. but i figured we’d hover around two or so – i remember doing a bit about driving across san marcos to save a shiny nickel per gallon and only pay $2.05 – same place is now $2.40, and that’s only in the last couple weeks!

i don’t understand the concept – every furniture, mobile home, and car sales place (as well as electronics, liquor stores, department stores, etc) will spend big bucks in the next seventy-two hours to show they love america more than their competition by slashing prices and offering no interest financing and other enticements because this is one of those “low price” weekends…

…except at the gas pump, where gas prices go UP because…well…we not only ALLOW them to,but we EXPECT them to. go fill up today (this is being written on friday, but it’ll still work on monday), ask the gas attendant why prices have gone up over the last week or two, and they all say the same thing…

“memorial day”

at a furniture store they’ll explain LOWER sofa prices the same way.

only in america – we commemorate those who fell to their death in the persian gulf sand box for, let’s face it, no REAL reason, by sending MORE money that way to line the pockets of the people that shot them or blew them the fuck up.