Thanking the greedy-little-bastards or, how high gas prices help writers

[Michael Haskins]

I have left my Jeep under the house (I live in a stilt house, I didn’t bury it) and bought a 2001 Miata. The Jeep got 15 mpg, on a good day, and the Miata gets 30 mpg most any day. I have gone from almost $100 a week in gas to about $30. That’s a pretty good savings. I am also a lot more aware of my running around in the evenings and on the weekends and schedule things now, like dinner, movies, a trip to the Hog’s Breath.

According to my friends, and reports on the news, I am not unique in this. People have begun to put the gas-guzzlers in the garage and turned to more gas efficient vehicles. Here in the Florida Keys that includes scooters and bicycles. I live 15 miles from downtown (not much in miles if I were still in LA, but miles and miles here in the Keys) and it’s too far, and unsafe, to ride a scooter on US1, or a bicycle.

Before we call began to support the new robber oil barrons, I might have driven to town and had breakfast on Saturday morning at Harpoon Harry’s and then come home to write. Now, thanks to gas prices and the greedy little bastards who bought the White House, I stay home Saturday morning and write or read.

I dislike big cities, but I suppose if I lived that kind of lifestyle, my daily routine may not have changed as much because of gas gouging, since there are so many places you can walk to (and face the possibility of being mugged) when you live in overcrowded metropolises.

So, I guess, I can kind of thank the greedy-little-bastards who are pillaging our savings, driving food prices to skyrocket and keeping many of us from taking driving vacations, because I am staying home writing the last chapters of my novel’s sequel and catching up on reading. If I had to guess, I’d say I am only about three-years behind in reading, where last year at this time I was five-years behind!

I’ve even stomped around under the house with a cigar and Jameson on the rocks, plotting out a short story built around the recent Key West Songwriters’ Festival and think it is workable! If gas had been less than $2 a gallon (yeah, get real, we’ll never see that price again!) I would probably have driven downtown, stopped at Finnegan’s Wake, Schooner Wharf, and the Hog’s Breath, and maybe not been so far along in the short story idea.

So, this is my tribute, and thank you, to the greedy-little-bastards for keeping me at the computer writing as they rape and pillage the American dream, horde their billions in quarterly profits, eliminate the middle class, while they tremble because they realize it could all come to an end in January ’09.

Of course, if the Democratic Congress lack of cajones is example of what the next administration holds for us, it is the American people who should be trembling, because there is less and less for us to lose and the plundering may not be stoppable.