One More Time

Have you ever noticed how - when you get down to the end - you can just keep on squeezin' a toothpaste tube harder and harder 'til enough paste comes out to let you brush your teeth one more time? It seems like the tube never really empties. It's like there's some sort of toothpaste asymptote or something. Eventually you have to throw the damn thing away; but you can't help wondering, "Was there one more day's worth left inside?" It's not just toothpaste tubes either; take for instance: White Out. No matter how old and crusty it gets, it seems like there's always enough left in the bottle to fix one more mistake. Don't even get me started on High-liters. This same observation - made thousands of years ago - provides us with the foundation of a major religious holiday. You put one day's worth of oil in a lamp, and it keeps burning and burning for like six or seven days! Oil can be a funny thing like that.

I don't care if you believe oil was placed here by God, or that it's recycled dinosaur juice, or even that it's abiotic and really is being replenished by the earth; intuitively, we all know that it has to run out ... someday; but we just keep on using it like it has some kind of magical power to replenish itself forever. I guess we all believe that the oil will last long enough for us; and maybe that's all anyone can really care about. A thousand - no, make that a hundred - years from now, I wonder what people will think when they look back on the age of oil.

I'm old enough to remember the first two oil crisis (is that plural?) under Nixon/Ford and Carter, and we all lived through the Bush oil crisis last year. There is a big difference between a Democratic oil crisis - where everyone gets 10 gallons every other day - and a Republican oil crisis - where you can burn all the oil you want at $4.25 a gallon. I don't really want to get into the politics of it, but I think it worth remembering that an energy crisis is non-partisan. There are those alive today who were born and raised before the age of oil - back in the days of king coal. My parents burned coal to heat their homes when they were young. The coal came from a coal yard in a big truck and was dumped - or worse, shoveled - into a bin in the cellar. It's a dirty, time consuming form of energy compared to oil - at least for the consumer. Could we ever go back to living like that?

And so it is that we live with oil. It's the best thing going ... and at least it will last a lifetime ... we hope. Have you considered laying in a personal petroleum reserve? I'm not talking about a lifetime supply; I'm thinking more along the lines of a tactical petroleum reserve: Eight 5 gallon cans - enough to get from here to, say, Canada. In the future, there's every possibility of another oil crisis. If one believes the rumors of water cut in Saudi oil wells, it seems that future shortages are all but guaranteed. Wouldn't it be nice to know you have enough fuel on hand to make a journey somewhere - even when no fuel is available? It's not like you're ever going to need it, but doesn't it seem prudent?