Okay, it's happening again. I filled up my car last night and paid a teeth-swallowing three bucks a gallon. WHY? What is their excuse this time? What is the reason the gasoline companies are giving for this latest episode of price gouging? Did some misguided fool consider insulting the Muslim prophet again and bring the Middle East to the brink of war? (Oh, yeah, I forgot, the Middle East has been at war or on the verge of it since Christ was a corporal.) Or did some moronic speculator insinuate that gas prices MIGHT rise again next year, prompting gas stations to run out lickety-split and change their signs? I want to know why we are being gouged again. I am even more curious to know why no one seems to be balking at this but me.

This is what seems to happen at regular intervals. The gas companies jack up the prices to some ludicrous number they know consumers will scream about. Then, when people start to believe that it will never get any better, the prices are dropped to something almost as painful but not quite as ridiculous. That's the public pacifier. The oil companies are still raking in cash manicured hand over bejeweled fist, but since they dropped the price a little, people think these magnanimous billionaires are doing them a favor. I remember the first time this happened, about ten years ago. Gas prices climbed to $1.99, and the public gasped in horror. Then it went up to an astronomical two-fifty a gallon. People everywhere were screaming "foul". And then the public pacifier; the prices went back down a bit. Suddenly two bucks a gallon felt like a lace had broken in our financial corsets, allowing us to breathe a bit. And that false fresh breath continued to hover over us for a while. The gas companies got their wish; they raised prices to two dollars a gallon, and no one complained anymore.

When the gas prices flew up to four-fifty a gallon last year, I knew this would happen. Eventually, the price would drop to three bucks or so, and since it's not four dollars anymore, the public is duly quelled and appropriately grateful to those wonderful billionaire oil barons again. Well, I'm not fooled. I am SICK AND TIRED of shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for gasoline just so some fat-cat CEO can buy a million-dollar bling for his latest girlfriend. I'd rather use my money for something frivolous for me or my family...say, electricity or water, for instance, which aren't getting any cheaper, either.

Refuse to be pacified. Three dollars a gallon is NOT a reasonable price, especially since everyone else in the lower forty-eight pays fifty cents a gallon less. But that is another gripe.