I stopped at my neighborhood Enmark station tonight to fill up my tank and you’d think the end of the world was nigh upon us. The station was crammed full of folks waiting to fill up. It didn’t hurt that the station had gasoline for $3.67 a gallon, while the Hot Spot just half a block down had gasoline for $3.79 a gallon.
But still, it was remindful of the great gas rush of a few years ago. Remember that? People were driving their Hummers to the station for fill-ups, and taking along 55-gallon drums to fill, too. As if we wouldn’t be seeing any fuel for ages.
Why must we freak out? I know there’s Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico, but let’s all just relax. Car pool to work with a friend for a couple of days. Ride a bike. Take the bus. I’ve been trying to do my part by riding the scooter when it’s not pouring the rain.
WLOSers are fueling people’s fears with stories like this, titled “Panic at the Pumps.”
Fears of a rumored gas shortage spark a run on mountain gas stations. People are flocking to gas stations across the area to fill up their tanks.
Triple-A says wholesale gas prices spiked today and several refineries closed as Hurricane Ike approaches in the Gulf.
Here in the mountains, rumors and emails circulating warned drivers that gas will go up by a dollar tomorrow. Triple-A says some North Carolina stations have placed restrictions on the number of gallons people can buy, but cautions the worst thing drivers can do is flock to filling stations to top off their tanks.
12 Comments
Yep we are in the same position as well. Yesterday as my car neared empty I tried to find a gas station. I saw people pushing cars and abandoned cars on the side of the road. I wasted what little gas I had trying to find gas. None of the stations that Citizen Times listed on their website as having gas at 12:05 had gas at 1 PM.
I just got gas this morning in Fairview!!! 40 dollars. I helped push 4 cars to the pump!!!
I drive for a living. Since I cannot drive, I cannot work. This cant go on for much longer. We don’t have mass transit in Fairview, NC. Carpooling is also not an option when no one has gasoline. This is just ridiculous.
Well, it looks like there really is something to worry about now. My family has nogas to go to work or pick up my child from school. Even if she did ride the bus that dosen’t help us get to work. We are stuck AT HOME losing money and not able to pay our bills and for what? How come my mother-in-law in Florida has no problem getting gas and it is at $3.20 and here in WNC we are lucky if we score a gallon?
I will have to let the irrational conspiracy theorizing go by with only my usual remark that human beings are neither that organized nor that good at keeping secrets to conspire in such large numbers (you gossip too, right?) but I cannot let such etymological heresies go unchecked.
Government does not equal mind control. Rather it is derived from kubervaw (transliterlated) which became gubernare in Latin, the ‘b’ corrupted to a ‘v’ into English via Norman French and the suffix ‘ment’ was added to make the verb into a noun, much like management, entertainment and so on. Kubernaw means to steer, to act as pilot or helmsman and metaphorically to guide or govern. (Intermediate Greek Lexicon, Liddel and Scott eds., Clarendon:Oxford University Press, 1899)
Thus, though the ‘ment’ in government and ‘mental’ look similar they are actually unrelated in this case. The idea of the government as being the pilot of a governed people originates in a very old and very often deployed metaphor of the ship of state. The most recent use of this metaphor in the U.S. government that I know of was by Senator Biden (Dem) in a speech on the war, which speech was largely ignored despite its use of quotations from Lincoln. Governor is, of course, our most directly derived English word as it refers to a single individual who is the chief of the government of a political body.
To steer a people is not to control a people, at least not in the sense of coercion implied by Hiram’s statement.
OK, let us do the math. The total US Fuel production is down by 15% and Gulf output is dowjn by 25%. We cannot blame this on WLOS. The folks we should be blaming it on are the Saudi Arabians in cohoots with families like the Bushes. A 15% drop is not enough to stop fuel shipments. Especially when we have one of the largest national stockpiles in Greensboro, NC. I believe this is a test of public response by the oil men running the Federal Reserve (a private bank – run for international bankers profits not for the good of Americans) to an ever weakening dollar, which buys 34% less now than it did last year.
China is urging it’s citizens to remove all dollar based investments and put them in gold/silver/Euros. If Dubai (UAE) removes the dollar as it’s peg currency our entire economy would collapse. So people, if you think this little test was bad then we should never have allowed our government to put us in this position.
Greek Root Words: Government = (Guber + Mente) = Mind Control.
Hey Zipperhead, Nice screen name, did you wrestle in High School. Cool dude!
Or, you could be like me and not have had access to television or internet for a few the last week (working with kids at a camp). I went to the pump with my tank on E, thinking it was a normal day. Now Im out of luck. Gas was up to $4.75 at one of the few stations that was still offering it.
Its funny, I had no idea that this was going on until today. I haven’t used my car in several days. I live at my job in the middle of no where and I haven’t been online to check the news. I think its great that I have been living my life carefree of all of this mess when the world around me is "freaking out." I am a informed and educated American, but sometimes you just have to take a break from it all. Do you need gas to survive? Is it that hard to carpool or find a ride? Do yourself a favor and don’t watch the news for a few days, go outside and play in the rain or walk in the woods. It will be more helpful to you then getting upset about the price of gas. As a side note…why is there hate towards the Mac user. How petty…
Don’t blame WLOS. They showed up after it all started and just reported what they saw and also urged people to "not" flock to stations. Would you rather they not show up at all and just pretend like it’s not happening wjile the other news outlets report it?
Seriously people, chill out. I think it was around Katrina when everyone freaked out about a supposed gas shortage and raced to the pump. Prices didn’t spike that much, gas didn’t run out, and everyone felt pretty dumb afterward for believing the hype.
We can thank WLOS for starting this mess.
Pandemonium!!! People at the Enmark in North Asheville were lined 2 and 3 deep up for early this morning for 3.78 a gallon gas…half a mile south at the Shell station, gas was 3.69 a gallon, with hardly anybody getting gas…go figure.
Rain never kept me off my scooter. You get wet. It’s like taking a Jerry Seinfeld shower. ooh, I forgot, you’re a Mac user.