Blame California

The lights are on, but nobody seems to be home in California. Our friends out West are complaining about the lack of energy ("Dear God, we might not be able to shoot the season finale of 'Friends!'") and who can blame them? They use more of it than any of the rest of us. \nWhich is why I propose the following. Get rid of California. We can just cut it off from the rest of America, and we'll never have to hear about them again. What good has California done for us? It has produced O.J. Simpson, silicone breasts and "Porky's 2:The Next Day." Surely we can live without such precious commodities.\nOn a serious note, this country is in serious trouble. Gas prices are at an all-time high in some parts of the nation, and we're whining like little babies. Europeans pay double, even triple what we pay per gallon sometimes, and we raise all hell once the rate hits $1.70 a gallon.\nThe problem with this country is that we're too lazy. Everyone has to drive to every single place they go, because God forbid they get a wrinkle in their cargo pants if they had to walk.\nPerhaps the biggest testament to the fact that we're the laziest society is the presence of parking lots at recreational facilities. The SRSC actually has a parking lot so that people can drive to the gym so that they can work out. You could of course run to the gym, but that would be logical.\nSo Californians are out in the dark, Americans are whining about high gas prices and our president is trying to figure out how to pronounce the word "conservation." All of this is adding up to be a big catastrophe.\nI've never been to California, mainly because murder became legal there in 1995, but those people are using too much gas. California drivers use more than 13 billion gallons of gasoline a year. The former Soviet Union and the United States as a whole are the only two nations that exceed this total, according to the California Energy Commission.\nTo help ease the energy crisis, President Bush has suggested that we look into the energy possibilities of Alaska. By "energy possibilities," I mean the vast destruction of everything that gets in our way of finding precious oil. Not surprisingly, this plan has drawn its fair share of criticism. \nThe problem is that we're too high on ourselves to realize that we, the people who consume so much energy, are the ones that have driven our companies to start looking for energy sources in places that we usually find on postcards or in National Geographic. The blame is on us. \nWe have become too adapted to the notion that we can have whatever we want, whenever we want, all for a fair price. Fossil fuels are a finite resource, and one day, they will cease to exist. What will we do then?\nWe have grown into this lifestyle where we expect convenience and shun the sacrifice of giving up something we "need." The society that protests drilling and deforestation is the same one that buys SUVs the size of small buses. We see no problem with paying $2 for a cup of coffee and then are outraged when we can't get a gallon of gas for under $1.50. I can assure you we are in no danger of running out of decaf mochachinos. Gasoline, on the other hand, won't be around for much longer.\nYou can protest the lack of energy, you can scream to the top of your lungs that gas prices are unfair. You can even criticize our president for his corporate policies toward the environment. But you can't look any farther than your nearest mirror to find the root of all this evil. Or you can just blame the Californians.