Could this blog be a...

LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATOR?

Aw, come on now...don't be silly. I don't purport to have the vast knowledge of an Alan Greenspan, or a Les Schwab, or even the janitor at the local High School...still, it's pretty easy for me to grasp at least part of what's going on. All you have to do is read the business page. The header says "BUSINESS: Economy...Jobs...Development...well, the economy's kinda stale right now, people are getting laid off from jobs, and according to a big Los Angeles developer, the home building industry won't improve until 2010. Judging from those three little things, I'd say this isn't exactly the best of times. That is further reinforced by the little news item that's headlined, "Oil prices fell sharply Tuesday, dropping below $124 a barrel, as demand concerns grew." Prices fell BELOW $124? That's sorta like the $4.25 PER GALLON price of gas down here on the coast, right now, receding to, say, $3.99 a gallon. If that ever happens. We're being conditioned; we just don't know it yet. Or maybe we do and there's nothing We Can Do. I do find it ironic that One Letter can make so much difference, yet both words are permanently conjoined together...GAUGE, as in gas gague, and GOUGE, as in what Gas Prices are doing to us.

Another sign o'the times can be found in advertising...A Big Auto Company is running commercials advertising $2.99-per-gallon gas FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS! But you can only drive "so many miles" (12,000) per year, which means you can only fill up at the $2.99 price "so many times", which means you can only buy "so much'" $2.99 gas during any calendar year, after which you pay regular price for gas until the next year of your 3-year Gas Agreement commences. That would be the "fine print" department which flashes on the screen at commercial's end, only you're too busy ogling the hot babe in the car commercial ("Mercury Mariner" comes to mind here). Auto-corp ads are structured sorta like those prescription-medicine ads that say sneaky things like "if you have a 72-hour erection or your arm falls off after taking this medication, see your doctor because something could be wrong with you." Economic Rule #1: If It sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Economic Rule #2: If it STILL sounds like a great offer, wait for a few seconds until the disclaimer at the end of the ad. I swear, on some of those medical ads, more time is spent detailing Every Possible Thing That Can Go Wrong if you take the medication than actually saying something POSITIVE about the product.

And a headline in today's paper says, "Book A Hotel, Get A Gas Gift Card." A hotel down here is doing just that...Hotel Guests get gift certificates worth $10 per each night's stay, redeemable at a local Chevron station. $10 worth of gas? That oughta be enough for you to drive to the next hotel, provided it isn't too far away. Oh, and you've gotta make rezzervations before June 30th and stay before July 30th. Then the offer is over. I guess the hotel figures gas prices will increase by another dollar a gallon after July 30th. Then, maybe you'd get a $15 gas card, for which you'd get the same amount of gas that you got with your earlier $10 gas card? But the Official Feedback to all of this comes from the General Manager of the Hotel, who said 'it was too early to say whether high fuel prices might cut into coast travel this summer.' ARE YOU KIDDING? Rising gas prices are gonna affect EVERYTHING AND TRAVEL TO ANYWHERE adversely. What we're experiencing now is best described by the title of an old Bachman-Overdrive song..."You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet."

All I know is, I am sure developing a one-track mind, concerning this fuel thing. I've written TOO MUCH about it lately. Okay, how about something different? Obama has allegedly won the Democratic Nomination, but Hillary still hangs in there, basically Not Giving Obama Credit for Existing. And now McCain wants to debate Obama. Don't we have to wait on all this stuff 'till we see what happens at the Democratic National Convention? Maybe McCain wants to try and make Obama look bad before the primary because if that happens, he'll run against Hillary and He'll most certainly win BECAUSE NO ONE LIKES HER. Perhaps the Democratic convention will be a case of "who is disapproved of the least by their own party?", and then in the general election, the candidate who offends the least (and has the most hanging chads) will probably win. And really, after that, life will go on, pretty much as it has gone on for eons. The day after the Election is just Another Day.

Okay, let's approach the Economy thing from another angle: Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that "the time for cutting interest rates is over in view of soaring oil and commodity prices and a weakened dollar." Come to think of it, tho, maybe that just summarizes everything that I've typed above. And if that's the case, then this post is waaaaaay longer than it had to be. I stand accused. All righty, then, I'll just end this with a little humor: I saw, on a car bumper this week, a little thing that said, "My kid got me this for my birthday. Not the car, the STICKER." And since Visual Elements are important to any piece of literature (or in this case, cyber-literature), I offer the following little photo satire below:

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You notice I didn't post anything about how the Seattle Mariners have been doing lately...if I did that, it would only add to the misery...