Gas Prices Skyrocket, Saddle Up

There is a very simple solution to your problem, America

Don’t buy into the hype—this sh*tshow is not your fault!

You didn’t ask to be gas addicts, petrol pawns, or fuelaholics. You did not exclaim to a Big Oil Exec:

“Please Sir, I would like to be screwed royally!”

It’s a fine state of affairs when you have to choose between gas, food, medicine, and ordering sex toys from Amazon.

Big Oil guys have been stringing you along for — you guessed it, their personal profits. Greedy shills who slather themselves in motor oil every morning, while the rest of us take normal showers, are to blame for your predicament.

Where can you find the oily corporate lizards? Vacationing in Maine for the month of August, driving Teslas, paying off elected officials — it’s all in a day’s work. How can you wreak vengeance? Sadly, they are too well fortified in mansions they bought with your dollars, so appropriate payback, i.e. murder and looting, isn’t practical.

It’s time to get real. Necessity is the mother of invention, and being denied your god-given right to cheap transportation is the eccentric Aunt of crafty alt transport, not to mention horsemanship.

Those guys who invented Lime scooters? They aren’t any smarter than you.

This listicle offers hope for how to successfully crawl out from under the corpulent and sweaty bodies of those oilmen, who have been screwing you since roughly 1931.

You can thank the Bush dynasty, the CIA, west Texas, and a host of money-grubbing reptilian white alpha males for supplying cheap product, but your junkie doomsday problems don’t matter! What’s important now is massive action. You need to pivot to blue-sky thinking like a clown coming out of a cannon.

Included here are real solutions as easy as making a living wage as a Medium writer — anyone can do it!

1. Become so rich you just don’t give a rat’s ass

You’d have to have rocks in your head to enjoy paying at the pump, but if you have millions, it won’t hurt anymore. Gas will still be $6 a gallon and climbing at an alarming pace, but you won’t feel it.

Repeat after me:

“Money is the oxycontin of the soul.”

Since you are a regular Jane or Joe driving a 10-year-old Corolla, go ahead and play Powerball every day, or sell your children, whatever it takes.

2. Buy electric, but first…get rich

Electric cars are swell, I know because my sister owns a Tesla. Once your fork over a wad of cash the size of Italy, the Muskmobile purrs its way from one cheap charging station to the next. Can’t afford a $60,000 vehicle? Buy on credit! Cruise past your local gas station, snickering at the low-life suckers who are dropping a cool C-note per visit. Some might say paying Musk instead of Big Oil still makes you feel cheap and used, but don’t let your emotions get in the way of pivoting away from a mule.

3. Stop driving everywhere….what the hell is your problem?

I’m aware you live on a farm in western Arkansas, but that’s no excuse. What’s that you say? You live in Wyoming? Then you can commute by horse. I realize you are the backbone of America, living in the heart of Marlboro country, but that guy also went extinct. You’ll need to figure out how to get to the feed store and the Dollar Store without driving. If you are a suburban soccer mom, collect a few bucks from those freeloading kids.

4. Move to a walkable city (see also #1)

You don’t have to be liberal and wealthy to thrive in a bustling hamlet where you can walk to yoga class, the farmer’s market, and the library — but it helps. You’ll be forking over bread, dough and other money metaphors to get your very own tickety-boo townhome a stone’s throw from the gluten-free bakery. I strongly advise #1, again.

5. Form an electric biker gang straight outta Mad Max

Does the idea of riding a motorcycle send shivers down your spine? What about paying $9 for a gallon of gas? Which causes more distress? Once you answer this question, you can stop worrying. Don’t let advanced age, poor balance, or common sense bury your dream of riding in a gang called Satan’s Yuppies. Bonus #1: so far Musk hasn’t cornered the slim market on electric motorcycles. Bonus #2: you will bond with a tribe willing to kill for you.

6. Steal a racehorse or mule from some rich f*ck

For most of human history, we’ve relied on livestock. Then the Oil Men moved workhorses from farms and ranches onto their colossal estates and turned them into overbred racehorses. Feel free to poach a horse, but tread carefully and walk under the cover of darkness. Take a flashlight, because if you miscalculate and come home with a miniature horse it won’t fix your transportation problems unless you are a munchkin.

7. Build a micro-hydroelectric plant in your backyard

For those with mechanical skills, the obvious solution is to harness the energy from a nearby river or robust stream. If you live in the southwest, you’ll need to harness the energy of sand. Ditto people in Minnesota, with snow. Kansas — wind. Arkansas, rocks. And so forth.

8. Move to another country, if you can find one that’ll take you

On paper, this pivot looks simple, but it helps to be young and have money and habla Espanol — not to mention a high tolerance for crappy infrastructure. I’m counting on Ireland, but I hear tell I might need to room with a family of Catholic, beer-guzzling leprechauns ’cause affordable housing is scarce. It is also rumored that Irish people drive cars, which means I will still have to pay for gas.

9. Exploit your neighbor’s desperation by starting a boutique taxi service

I live in a geezer-centric community where some of the retirees cart around other, more decrepit retirees. These self-proclaimed professional drivers charge a reasonable fee, but you can go one better and start your own taxi biz where you serve coffee or vodka gimlets (see #11) and provide nostalgic music with every ride! Up charging and supersizing is the American way.

10. Become Amish as soon as possible

Start by reading plenty of articles about how easy it is to homestead, and how simple it is to garden, forage, and become a successful bow hunter. Then marry someone stout and hearty of the Amish persuasion. Conquer off-grid living without a pickup truck while commanding an army of free child labor. When you figure it out, start a blog that convinces others to make off-grid living their bitch, too. This is totally realistic at any age and skill level, especially if you enjoy manual labor, isolation, and relying on increasingly erratic weather for your meals.

11. Deal drugs, including coffee, bitcoin, and doom writing

Get others addicted, so you can get rich. Pick a substance or concept with a low barrier to entry. This will skyrocket your personal wealth, which solves all your problems — see #1. Starting a cult is not a bad option, either, because even if doesn’t make you rich, you can get your followers to drive you around and pay for gasoline.

12. Start a scooter company

I’ve ridden a Lime, and also a Bird. I’m no scooter genius, but I can tell you those things get beat up. I mean, they take some serious concrete and verbal abuse. Eventually, they’ll need to be replaced. Why not go and invent a better scooter? Those Yeti guys did it with coolers, and even though he went broke, Buckminster Fuller did it with the geodesic dome. Scooters are the horses of the future.

13. Curl up into a fetal position and take actual oxycontin

The age of gasoline (1930–1972, 1973–2021) is over. RIP. Drown your sorrows in cheap liquor or heavy opiates. You shouldn’t be driving under the influence anyway, so stay home and bask in the nostalgia of $1.25 gasoline.

It was fun while it lasted!

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Story, published.