Pound Foolish

This all started because I was trying to save gas. Gas that has, just lately come down to a price that borders on reasonable.



Of course, the jackals who used gasoline futures as a place to shield their money from banks they knew were on the brink of failure made out like bandits, as did the petroleum companies themselves. And the latter gets a bonus: they had gas between $3 and $4 a gallon for so long people pay $2.25 a gallon and do a happy dance as if they'd won something.


I'll bet if you took the chicanery out of it, a gallon of unleaded, taxes and all, is still probably worth about a buck and a half.

And yes, I understand that futures markets actually serve valuable purposes in the economy. I think if you stripped away the bullshit, you'd find out that while there has been some gaming of the system, what is more at play is that people managing money were moving to hard commodities like gasoline because they feared the house of cards at places like Lehman Bros. Now that Uncle Sam has nationalized the problem (not fixed it, just nationalized it), all these goombahs have said to themselves, 'Why would I want 800,000 gallons of November unleaded? I only own three cars.' So they've sold off and exited a market they didn't truly belong in.



So anyway, this isn't all about the foolish money management of titans. This is about my own stupidity.

We had a pumpkin party to go to, at a house that's not far from church. There was a pancake breakfast at church, so we'd just eaten prior to leaving the place. I figured we could count a breakfast that late as brunch and avoid driving all the way back home between church and the party.



Plus, we had pumpkins to buy. Which took a lot less time than I'd expected. It happened almost instantaneously, really.



My plan was, as last year, to hit the Nelson to kill the rest of the time. But Mo wasn't just averse to this, she was actually weeping. I couldn't make sense out of her answers to my questions, but I decided not to lead her wailing through the galleries.



Crown Center was a fall-back position. Mo wasn't happy about being there, either, but Em needed a restroom so we had to go in at least.



Over and over, I said, 'No, whining isn't going to get you want you want.' This as Mo said 'Go to car' through tears.

We passed by Chip's Chocolate Factory and the whining stopped. I know, well, yeah, that's chocolate. But spider-senses or whatever, I could sense that Mo was trying to marshall every communicative cell in her body and not just because it's sweets. She got very, intensely, calm.



Are you actually hungry? I asked her. Not just for sweets, but for lunch?

'Yes!' She said it like it was a huge relief.



So Crown Center isn't the cheapest place to eat on earth. I looked at the menus of a couple of places, and Fritz's seemed to be the most reasonably priced. I didn't have time at this point to go clear back home, and it looked like Fritz's wouldn't be much worse than driving through somewhere.



Well, it was a little worse than driving through when I got the tab, but the food was delivered to the table by a train. And the girls ate ravenously, so I'd clearly underestimated the value of a big brunch.


Fritz's Delivery System from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Once fed, Mo was much more receptive to the joys of Crown Center. Both honyocks were generally less pickle-butted at that point, really.



Thing is, what I spent on lunch, I could have driven home and back probably three times.