Give Me A[nother] Break

[credit is given on image]

The world must be ending. Who knew gas prices would prance another day in $1 land?

Who knew the stock market liked to play snakes and ladders?

Who knew the people who gave us education would be laid off by the thousands?

And, who knew there were three weeks in a winter break? At least, that’s the case in California. Trust me, if the government is willing to add another week to students’ holiday vacations (we all know they just want to torture us), it means the sky is falling...well, maybe Arnold’s sky.

In fact, three-week winter vacation has already been in effect. In just this past holiday, the Los Angeles Unified School District had their schools award their students with another week of caroling and partying. But you know what’s even worse? They’ve recently reached an agreement to lay off thousands of teachers in the district. You’ve gotta feel some sympathy for the folks. No profession works harder to give us all an education—and no profession are paid less for what they are obliged to do. If you think of their situation, it gets even miserable. Just think about it—if a teacher is laid off in a district, do you think they could get another job in the same district? The district had just laid off a bunch of teachers...do you think they would hire the same person they just laid off? Yes. That means the teacher has to find a job in a more faraway county (NOT country...if that day comes, we might as well eat dirt), and if it comes to the worse, they would have to move to another place just to work in another district.

"We are the creators of our own destruction."

–(Sorry, sounds familiar, but I don’t know who to credit)

Yes, yes we are. Ancient Rome killed itself, one way or another, because of their ignorance. Humankind is trashing the Earth even as I speak, even though we know we’re goners if we don’t protect it. We’re still spending our money on wars and foreign oil, investors are still investing in all the wrong stuff, and banks are as chaotic as Katy Perry’s songs.

Life is filled with way too much irony.

-the clam.

A "GAS-ly" Disaster

(sorry for the bad title puns...including my last article...haha)

Did you think paying $4.50 per gallon of gas is expensive (even though it is)?

You obviously haven't seen Oslo, Norway's price per gallon.

For unleaded gas alone, it costs about $2.68.

Oh, hah! I forgot to tell you: that's the price of gas per quarter gallon. The real price per gallon costs about $10.72. Don't worry, your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

For a full, 10-gallon tank, that would cost you about $107.20. I don’t know about you, but that's just insanely mad. For the same 10-gallon tank over here in the U.S., that's more than double the amount you'd have to pay.

Eight years ago, about around this time of year, the price of unleaded gas was only $1.59. People would die for prices like that. We could get 30 gallons of gas today for $45, with that $1.59 price. Imagine what you can do with all that money you could save...

It's sad how this whole gasoline ordeal is affecting us. It's bad enough that the Earth has to suffer for our convenience, but our money and economy has to go through disastrous spending. If we had the technology back then, we could've started our transportation with renewable sources, but now, it's a bit too late. Just imagine—if we were to switch to floating cars (which will probably never happen), the entire world's highways and roads would have to be replaced (if it was required). That would result in even more spending.

But if we simply switch to hydrogen/electricity-powered cars, it would still cause problems. Where will all the people in the world get their gas if they still have a gasoline-powered car? Does that mean the government will have to give out free hydrogen/electricity-powered cars? Think of the costs!

You know, it might well be too late to change our way of transportation, but I still believe that we can change the way we treat the Earth. Personally, I try to recycle any goods that are recyclable. Look at it this way—you're saving the Earth, and you're getting money for recycling. It couldn't get better than that. Besides, you don’t want that CRV tax to haunt you forever.

With all that said, I saw this hilarious depiction of our crisis. Take a look (it's my favorite!):

(thanks to the source written in the corner above for the image!)

-the clam.