Just one bit of ridiculousness

On Tuesday, I filled up my tank with the usual premium-grade gas, and the price was what it had been more or less for the last few weeks: $2.75/gallon. I drove by the gas station today, and the sign said it was now $3.70.

As harsh as it is on the Gulf Coast, there really is no legitimate excuse for that kind of jump. I know in other regions it's even worse.

In general, I support having higher overall gas prices by way of a tax structure similar to what most of the rest of the civilized world has. We've had it pretty good for a long time now, and it's time to make incentives for improving conservation. But higher prices that are purely speculative and profit-taking measures by those that control distribution and production, using the excuse of a tragedy as cover, is infuriating.

I'm hoping this is just a blip and it will level out in a week or so. I've got a full tank, so I can ride it out (so to speak) for a bit. But I can't help but be annoyed.

To the subject of the tragedy, I've been following some of the threads over on Fark where they're reporting the official scanner traffic, and otherwise compiling a lot of the events as they're happening. But one side-effect of having something discussed on Fark is that a bunch of assholes come out of the woodwork and spout off some really ignorant, ill-informed and unempathetic crap about the population stuck in that situation right now. But then I find out a lot of that crap is originating from the usual suspects in the puditry circles. And I'm steamed about it. It's enough to drive me back into full escapism mode for the next few days. All the hypocracy and cognitive dissonance is threatening to make my head pop, so maybe closing the damn browser and watching the next "Haibine Renmei" disc or a few discs of "Noir" is just the ticket for this holiday weekend.