Ah, near-raw meat at its finest...

There's this wonderful little burger joint that is quite near my apartment that I just love. I was introduced to it a couple of weeks ago and have been a happy customer ever since. One of the perks is that they'll cook the burger to your liking. So, tonight, I called in my order (medium rare jumbo burger with cheese and sauteed onions and a small fries yum) and was told that it would be ready in 20 minutes. Great, cool, enough time to gas up the car and get there in time for some fresh, hot food. Sure enough, I get there, the owner's wife takes my payment, and I wait. And wait. And wait a little more. It's been at least 35 minutes since I put my order in, so I'm getting slightly agitated. I understand that small businesses don't run like clockwork, but still, there's a margin of error that you can eventually hit the wrong side of. Finally, the owner comes out with my to-go box and says, "I walked back there and saw that it was cooked a little more than you like, so I had them cook another one just right." I stood there dumbfounded for an instant, totally speechless. Wow, not only did they seem to know who I was, making the dining experience a little more personal than I'm used to, but they actually cared enough to make sure that the food was as perfect as possible. My God. My faith in humanity actually rose a notch, a rare thing these days. I responded the only way I could actually think of at the time, with a "Wow, thank you very much," and the knowledge that I would indeed be back several more times by the end of the month. Honestly, when was the last time the guy behind the McDonald's counter told you, "Oh, we remembered that you liked your burgers with extra onions, so here you go. Enjoy." Please. A good friend of mine ordered a cheeseburger plain last night and the guy behind the counter had enough of a grasp on English to understand cheeseburger and nothing else she said. Of course, being the standard American who doesn't like conflict, she wiped off as much of the onion/mustard/ketchup mix as she could and still complained to me about the taste of pickles. While it is entirely probable that I wouldn't have gone to the owner of this burger restaurant and complained my burger was too done, it's very reassuring to me that the merchant was trying to please the customer down to the last detail and that I didn't really have to worry about it.
Since I already brought it up, gas prices really do seem to suck, right? I mean, I put $20 worth of gas in my car tonight and it didn't even fill the tank completely. Do you know how many meals at my favorite local burger place that would have bought? Three. How crappy, right? No. Wrong. Sorry, but thanks for playing. Yeah, gas prices suck. Welcome to the world of balanced consumer prices. Let's face it: the economy? Yeah, it's in shambles. The dollar's down, the everything else is up. Therefore, it takes more dollars to buy a barrel of oil, which trickles down. Then, we take into account that it costs more $55 to buy a barrel of light crude oil. Which, by coincidence, is a 55-gallon drum. Okay, so check this out: from the get go it takes $1 to get one gallon of oil. Now, let's go through the refining process. Without even knowing everything about the process, I'm going to be nice and say that they can strain two gallons of gas out of every gallon of crude oil. Let's be reasonable and say it costs $1 to refine a gallon of oil into two gallons of gas. Next, we have to distribute it. Well, it takes a lot of fuel, and I mean a lot, to transport tanker barges and semi-trucks across vast distances to get to your local gas station. But, to be kind, how about we say that it only costs a quarter of the current price of two gallons of diesel per gallon of gas (one by sea, one by land), which is currently at $2.25. Okay, let's do math. Yea! Fifty cents for the oil, then $.50 to refine it, then $1.12 to ship it to Ma and Pa's Good Ole Gas Stationarium. Hum, by my math, that's $2.12 without anybody making any profit so far. Since we are a capitalist nation (Go Kapitolizm, the new Russia says), everybody should make a profit, right? But, looking out my window and seeing regular unleaded going for $2.18 a gallon, that only leaves 6 cents per gallon for the gas station, the distributor, and the fat execs at the corporate level, plus any state taxes that might apply. Now, I know these figures are off because I'm just talking out of my ass and don't really care enough to research. But let's be honest: is it killing you to pay a little extra. Is the higher price of gas keeping you from doing frivolous things, or buying three extra cheeseburgers a week? Good. Damn, we think because we didn't get much damage in WWII that we are the kings of the world. God, the golden age is over. If Nam didn't snap us out of that delusion, we are a lost cause. What exactly makes America so much better than everyone else that we deserve to be treated like royalty? Isn't that why the forefathers decided to kick Britain's ass eleven score and nine years ago? Because we have the bomb? Nope, sorry, but several other nations belong to that damnible club. Because we keep paying nations "aid" money? Yeah, that's a stupid practice left over from that thing called the Cold War, where we thought the best way to win was to buy off friends, but we see how close a set of friends they really are. Of course, it's not like we don't deserve that sort of reputation. The way we handle international affairs is laughable. We're not saviors to these foreign lands. We're vultures who show up when it benefits us. We're just scouting locations for a new Wal-Mart, oh, but I guess we can get rid of some of those insurgent forces while we're here. I swear, sometimes, I just want to leave, but every now and then there's hope that even though the administration and government screws up, the next generation will make it better, and that the people around me aren't the ones who got us into this position. They're in the boat with me, living in a nation on a downward slope and we've actually got the patriotic sense not to be like rats on a sinking ship. I believe in the nation. I just can't believe in some of the leaders that it elects. I liked Bill. Bill was the kind of president I could party with, and he embraced that image at times (Fleetwood Mac at the inaugural? Oh. My. God. My kind of guy). Yet I cannot stand Bush. The boyish charm that Bill had turned into sleazy arrogance in Bush. And I fear 2008's outcome. Will it be the case of "Meet the new boss, / same as the old boss," or will we venture into some undiscovered country that can bear a new, strong, and honest America? Oy, I'm not sure I'll live to 2008 without getting an ulcer first.
Anyway, gas prices. Yeah, get over yourself America. You didn't save the world from the scourge of communism, you just caused a good chunk of the world to go bankrupt and things have been downhill since then. You think $2.25 or whatever the average is is bad, think about in the early 1970s, when the gas prices, once adjusted for inflation, were much higher. The big reason people complain about gas prices is because wages went up due to inflation while gas prices really didn't, meaning that for years people had "extra" money to throw away on pointless things, like extra orders of fries. And people wonder why there is such a problem with obesity these days.
Alright, enough ranting. The SotP for last time was Alan Jackson's It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, a song that essentially revitalized Jimmy Buffett's career, but caused him to lean toward a money country sound. First, I love the song. It justifies my breaking down at 10 a.m. to have a drink, since in Britain it's just hit 5 p.m., and I like to think that since some of my ancestors probably came from that cold and foggy rock, I should honor their time zone accordingly. Second, the lyrics really do speak to that working-class slob inside me. Today, for instance, my boss asked me to do a project that quite nearly pushed me to the limit and it took everything I had not to say, "I'm outta here. I don't need this shit." All the time that I was doing this shitty-ass (is there any other kind of ass, I must ask?) project, I considered just jumping in my car and driving to Florida, maybe just going all the way to Key West and setting up there. God, what a life it must be there. Hell, I'd work at the Wal-Mart there if it meant I could spend the rest of my life on this little island with its crystal clear water and beautiful women. Maybe I'd even meet Jimmy. Which is the third thing about this song that is great. I mean, what kind of legacy does it demonstrate when someone in a crappy situation wonders "What would Jimmy Buffett do?" A great and wonderful twist on "what would Jesus do?" it's a great mantra for the free spirit in each of us that just wants to tell the boss to shut the fuck up and walk into the local bar to order a hurricane. Plus, there's just something wondrous about how clear and strong Buffett's voice is when he sings that first line. His career started in the late sixties, and here he is, thirty-five years later, and his voice is perfect. During the winter break of my junior year in high school, I found Jimmy Buffett for the first time. My dad always listened to him on long trips, but I always read a book or put on headphones to listen to something else. However, that break, I listened to the great songs that Buffett put out early on: A Pirate Looks at Forty, Son of a Son of a Sailor, Come Monday, and He Went to Paris. These songs were so strong to me that they made me long for this life on the sea, by the ocean, whatever. I wanted to live the lives put down in those songs, even the sad ones. Hell, Buffett said it best in Paris when he sang "Some of it's magic, / some of it's tragic, / but I've had a good life all the way." While Jimmy didn't get pushed all the way out of my music collection, the flame definitely started to flicker out (that one's for you, Dwainker) in my early college years. Books and homework took me away from a longing for singing and sailing. Plus, to me, Margarittaville is a song that gets played on the radio way too much in the summer months, so that kind of killed my buzz. However, one day, Five O'Clock came on the radio and I just ignored it until I barely heard the words "Jimmy Buffett" (Surely no one would say "Jimmy Buffett" in a country song, I thought) and that voice came through so beautifully strong. My longing for the sea came back in that instant. There's just something in his voice that is so sad, so regretful, yet so nostalgic at the same time. A longing for the traditions of a past time, yet knowing that they likely will never be again. Something ancient, yet timeless. Perhaps Jimmy is just Poseidon incarnate. Or Captain Kidd, for that matter. Although, most of the songs that Jimmy did on License to Chill recently just didn't work for me. However, there were three songs on that album that I liked, which will probably come up in future SotPs.
Wow. That's a big post. If you made it to the end, give yourself a round of applause. And if you're wondering, as I was asked last night, when I find time to write so much, I either make time (like now, when I could be sleeping) or I do it while on the job (hey, I might not be able to take a Jamaican vacation of company time, but this is close enough).

Song of the Post: "Someone painted 'April Fool's' / in big black letters on a Dead End sign. / I had my foot on the gas / as I left the road and blew my mind."