Damn Europeans, or: Thinking You're Smarter Than You Are

Ok, I'll just say it. I'm sick of the Europeans (and the Brits, since they don't consider themselves part of Europe) always jumping down the Americans' throats when we complain about our gas prices. Yes, we know that the price of fuel "over there" is twice what we pay here. But guess what? We in the US are pretty much forced to drive to most places we need to go, be it work, school, the grocery store, etc. Most of us aren't lucky enough to live in a self-contained, small town where everyone lives within walking/biking distance of everything. Hell, most of us aren't even lucky enough to live in a city that has a decent public transport system. Last time I checked, Europe and the UK had excellent public transportation, not to mention lots of small towns where it's actually feasible to go places on foot.

Blame suburban sprawl. Blame the size of the country. Hell, blame the government for all I care. But don't blame those of us who have no option but to drive our cars while the oil companies keep making excuses for why they "need" to keep jacking up our prices. Last time I checked, the price of oil was actually on the decline, yet they're already predicting that we'll be paying over $4/gallon by the end of summer. Why? Because it's summertime when lots of people do lots of driving, and they feel they can gouge us because we have no choice but to pay.

Ah, capitalism.

Leaving on a jet plane

I think it's probably a good thing that I'm finally done with school, for many reasons. One of which is the fact that I always forget how much work it is to get ready for a trip until one comes up again. I always end up scrambling about at the last minute, culminating in me having to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning the night before I'm supposed to leave on some ungodly 8:00am flight, which makes me pissy, which makes me argue about stupid things with the bitchy TSA people who all clearly suffer from delusions of grandeur.

But that's not the point. The point is that I've got two trips coming up, one to southern California for five days and the other to Syria for six weeks, and I'm determined that this time I'm going to be organized because really, I don't have much else to do these days. The funny thing is that while I love traveling, I hate packing and I really hate unpacking.

Now if I could only find a decent ticket into Damascus...

Well, I've finally done it

I've finally hit internet-rock-bottom. Not only do I have Facebook and MySpace accounts, but now I've got a blog of all things. What have I become? Surely not one of those annoying, cutesy, illiterate, mildly retarded attention-whores who ruin the internet for everyone by bogging it down with animated gifs with sparkles and various shades of nauseating pink, being sure to embed the latest seizure-inducing bubble gum pop chart-topper... right?

In any case, an intervention of some kind might well be in order.