Marietta is almost out of gas.

Finals this week yet again. Which means that I am procrastinating, reading the CNN news on the web. One of the stories featured something about a severe gas shortage in the southeast, and the city featured was........... Marietta, Georgia??

I had 1/4 of a tank, which according to my aunt and my late grandfather means it was past time to feed my truck. I also had to pick up a cartridge for my printer. So, off i went - to see what this was all about.

On my short drive (entire loop, less than seven miles) I saw eleven gas stations that were completely out of gas - including the QT across from my subdivision. I found one open Shell station and filled my tank, and I wonder if I would have been able to do that later this afternoon.

It is, of course, an interesting note that I have access to so many gas stations per square mile around here. But I'll get back to that.

No gas? No big prob for me, I have a bike to get to and from school and enough gas to get to and from work on Friday, if replenishment does not arrive. But it makes you think..... especially in the context of a potential looming depression / financial collapse of the US economy:

How is it, exactly, that we have become so very accustomed to convenience that when it is gone, we are lost? Is this what being an American is all about? In short, yes.

As for the question of whether we are dependent on foreign oil: I wonder how many people will not make it home this evening, or not be able to finish jobs that require trucks or other gas-eating transportation. I wonder if the easy availability of gas, will in fact be the nail in the coffin - why would we try to live without it, when it is so easily available?

So, I had to visit three places to pick up a printer cartridge. Microcenter was out of the model I needed, and Office Cheapo was anything but. I mean, why pay $80 for a replacement laser cartridge, when you can buy a new color printer for $28 at WalMart?

I think that pretty much embodies the problem as I see it. Me, living on student loans, driving an SUV and feeding it $4 per gallon gas, visiting three dealers of luxuries to buy an item on credit, that I want but strictly speaking don't need. Guilty as charged.

Walking through WalMart, I looked around me at all of the products on the shelves and I felt like an alien - and thought about how things were when I was a kid, how things were for my parents' generation growing up, and how things were for my grandparents. America = consumerism, and this consumerism is not counterbalanced with sufficient production, as evidenced by the state of the economy. I think Ayn Rand wrote a book about this............

Then I come home, and look around. All of my toys, all of my furniture, all of my "stuff" that I'm so not looking forward to packing up to move. How did I end up with this much? By and large, from student loans, and from the generosity of my family. And from easy availability, in a consumerist society that allows those who have not produced, to consume.

Sure as crap I need to get the hell out of school and to start producing something. Unfortunately, what I will produce is an intangible product - and a luxury, at that. In times of economic woe, the luxuries go first... If we do indeed enter into a depression, I think I am going to have a pretty hard time starting up a practice.

Good thing I have a secure job at REI to fall back on. Because sometimes I worry about the practical value of the two doctoral degrees I will soon possess.