"Let's face it, with most other weblogs it's just blab, blab, blab, me, me, me all the time." --deconsumption.

Guilty as charged. Here we go.

Work today. Manager: Gone, out of town. Gas prices: UP. Up up up. Drive-offs: Also up.

(The station where I work typically has a very low drive-off rate due to its location. Which means that on the rare occassion that it does happen, it's a Big Deal. Today, there were two, both for large amounts, and both during busy periods when the lone cashier was so busy ringing up customers that we didn't even notice it had happened until long after the fact, much less get a license number. One of these was during somebody else's watch, and one was during mine.)

Prediction: Before the beginning of 2006, prices for all grades of fuel in Lincoln will exceed $3 per gallon.

I contemplated writing a script to extract my gas expense data from gnucash and plot a graph of the cost of each fill-up over time for the past several years. Since I don't keep track of the exact number of gallons on each bill, it wouldn't be an exact indicator. Typically, I only buy gas when the tank is nearly empty, so it should provide a rough idea of the trend.

The last time Tobias refueled was at the beginning of June, in the western part of Nebraska. That is to say: It was during the trip to bring the rest of my things over from Colorado. I arrived in town with a quarter tank, and haven't put any in since. I'm hoping I won't need to for at least another month.

This is an exciting time to be alive, historically speaking. Also a little scary sometimes. Here we are, on the verge (or in the midst) of America's great collapse, and everything still seems mostly normal. Business as usual. The signs of what is ahead are visible for those who care to read them.

...

The other night, an elderly lady came into the station, and expressed disapproval at the ever-increasing cost of putting gas in her car. She looked at me. "Oh, I know it's not your fault. It's just... I hope whoever's getting rich off this is happy." She paused for a moment from writing her check to ask a serious question. "Is it because of the war?" As if she thought that I, a mere low level clerk, would have some profound wisdom to dispense on the matter.

Since she had asked, I decided to go ahead and give her a straight answer. "Demand around the world in countries such as India and China is going up, and the total amount of oil that can be extracted around the world is about to go down. Soon, there won't be enough to sell to everyone who wants it."

"Are they going to start rationing it?"

"It's certainly possible."

Then, just before she went out the door, a comment out of nowhere: "Well, maybe building those internment camps is a good idea. They've got to do something about what's going on."

I was too shocked to think of any reply. A total non sequitur, but a disturbing one. I wasn't even clear specifically to what she was referring, though one could make a few guesses. Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo?

Is this how Germans talked when they learned of Hitler's Final Solution? It has a similar sort of bizarre logic. Was this woman representative of how many Americans now think?

Interesting times, indeed.