On Super Bowl Sunday, I borrowed my hot friend’s car to run to the store before the real game of the day, the fighting Memphis Tigers brunch basketball game against the Temple Owls. Temple was a dangerous sleeper team, and not just because it’s Bill Cosby’s alma mater.
In a hurry, I did not look at her gas gauge, and I ran out of gas. Running out of gas is not a problem for a female ten, but for a bowlegged old man like me who is a maybe a four in good lighting, folks just do not stop and help.
Having outrun my redneck roots, I have not run out of gas since Jimmy Carter was president. But as I was soon to find out, things have changed in the gas can business since then, all at the ham-handed hands of our Federal Government.
When my Northern friends visit, I tell them we are going to have a redneck weekend, which is fighting, f@#*ing, and fixing flats. Not far behind those is running out of gas.
The car was stopped that morning in the “S curves” in Chattanooga near “Jesus Junction.” This is the dangerous part of the road where many of the churches were just letting out. No one leaving church stopped to help me. I guess none of the churches was named “The Good Samaritan.” Cars were buzzing by, and it was dangerous. The church people would not stop, and neither would the liberal hipster class (they may have recognized me).
For some reason, Chattanooga has an inordinate amount of Subaru cars, and many sport “Blue Grass Forever” stickers. I am not sure why; it was like that when I got here. So many Subarus were sold in Chattanooga over the last ten years that the local dealer was awarded the job of mayor at a national sales convention.
Given that it was Chattanooga, a policeman stopped to help me. He could not have been nicer. In Atlanta, the cops are too busy not solving murders.
You always get what you want from local government. The thing I rail against is the burdensome federal government. To illustrate: Have you tried to use what used to be a simple product, the modern gas can? I had to go buy one and get gas. It was frustrating.
Gas cans used to work. They were simple. You put gas in, you put the spout into your gas tank, open the vent and pour. But no longer, not since the federal government got involved in regulating one of the most basic items in our lives, the plastic gas can. Now you need an engineering degree to work a gas can. And you not only spill more gas, you end up so frustrated it is not worth it.
So I looked into the situation for this column. It turns out that the EPA got the idea of screwing up the gas can from…wait for it… the Peoples Republic of California. California has been legislating and ruining our lives one simple consumer product at a time. Because the plastic gas can was such a bad idea in California, the EPA in Washington demanded it be nationwide.
California is so helplessly “woke” they view cemeteries as voter suppression.
California cannot even provide electricity. They have rolling blackouts. It stinks there. The difference between the Titanic and California? The Titanic went under with her lights on. With crushing regulations and taxes, California’s homeless population menaces the cities. The state cannot even control wildfires. It is so bad in California now that it seems God is trying to burn it to the ground for the insurance money.
Government loves regulations. Just when their COVID regulations say you can travel, sky-high gas prices say you can’t.
Not knowing anything about a product has never been an impediment for government to monkey with it. And liberal Democrats love to control everything we can and cannot do. Look no further than the new gas cans, which are unworkable and spill more gas than ever. Now multiply that by all the things government touches.
If Moses came down the mountain today with the Ten Commandments, we would never know about half of them because they would be flagged by government and their tech oligarch henchmen for violating community standards.
