The Drive Home...

Retrograde Motion

Driving down the boulevard yesterday, I saw three very attractive young women in crack-hugging shorts and cleavage revealing t-shirts trying to entice male drivers into the local Hooters. The whole scene set the women's movement back a century. For so long, women fought to be seen as something more than sexual objects and baby-making machines... and here these young women stood, striking provocative pose after provocative pose... what a shame.

Intolerance

Two blocks away from the scene above, I see a pick-up truck bearing the following bumper sticker: "Kill 'em all -- Let Allah sort them out." This is the same grade of intolerance that defines the "Islamic extremists"... what a shame.

False Advertising

Another mile down the road, I nearly crashed my car at the site of a filling station with regular grade gas advertised for $2.92 per gallon. As I prepared to make a U-turn to go back, I realized that all of the Regular and Plus nozzles were covered with bags... they only had Premium for $3.19 per gallon. False advertising... what a shame.

Gas Wars

This morning, for about the hundreth time, I received the e-mail that encourages Americans to boycott American petroleum company ExxonMobil. For me, that's virtually an impossibility, because I've already boycotted foreign gas suppliers Citgo (Venezuelan), Shell (Dutch) and BP (British), in an effort to keep my dollars at home. That doesn't leave many other options, save the independents -- and I can't seem to find out where their gas comes from.

Perhaps I've become too much the nationalist here recently -- buying American whenever I can -- but given the significant impact that foreign products are having on my local economy (Norfolk Ford Plant to Close), I just can't see myself inflicting even the smallest of injuries to an American company. Perhaps I'm naive to think that my measly contributions to US companies could have even the slightest of impacts... but to sit idly by and watch industry after industry move overseas is frightening. We are already so dependent on foreign imports that our country could be paralyzed at the mere whim of a hostile nation.

I'm just saying...