Oil Addiction and My Neighbor

Whenever I think of the reasons for the underwater oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico I think of this guy in my neighborhood. He own all the adult male toys - RV, ORV, ATV, SUV - you name it, if it has initials and consumes fossil fuels he's got some. He also has a shitty life.

Middle-aged with a beer belly, he is a stereotype of the suburban Republican. He works in the construction industry which, in Southern California, means he is earning half of what he made back when he bought his toys. He wife left him. Not talking divorce here, she up and ran as far away as she could from him and his pink-faced brat of a son (who has since grown into a pink-faced thug of a young man). All he has left to console him is his toys.

• His RV is one of those huge monsters that cost about a quarter of a million dollars. He can't afford to take it out much anymore but he still has to pay storage for it because it is too big to legally park on the street.
• He's got two-wheeled, three-wheeled, and four-wheeled off-road vehicles. If they made a five-wheeled vehicle I'm sure he'd buy one. None of them has anything remotely resembling a muffler because most of the fun is in the manly roar they make.
  
• He even owns a power washer, gas fueled of course, to keep them all clean.
• His joy, however, is his boat. The big, fucking 30-footer he has parked in his driveway.

His boat is WAY bigger.

I don't remember the last time he was able to put it on the water but he still loves his boat. Every weekend he carefully removes the tarp covering the boat and sits in it. He drinks beer, listens to country music, and pretends he is on Lake Mead. Occasionally he'll start the engine and leave it roaring in the driveway, pretending it is skimming along the water.

Last weekend he hooked the boat up to the trailer hitch on his pickup truck. He drove the boat around the neighborhood for an hour then he parked it back in his driveway. He spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in his boat getting drunk.

The problem is that this pathetic guy is copied millions of times across this country. The reason that incautious executives and ill-trained engineers were drilling for oil past their depths in the Gulf of Mexico is to feed the oil addiction of Americans men. All of their rumbling toys spewing power are penis substitutes for men who have lost the ability to feel masculine without artificial aides.

Their oil addiction is a much greater burden to society than all of the heroin addicts that ever lived. America would be much better off if they traded their gas hose for a smack syringe.