Dreaming Of The Days When Gas Was $4.20 A Gallon: A Nevin Barich Blog Experience

(Don't forget to also check out my podcast entitled Things That Matter With Mike And Nev. Only at http://www.mikeandnev.blogspot.com/)

I had a dream the other night.

I dreamt I was being chased by an angry mob of accordian players...

(just go with me on this)

...and in the course of running for my life, I came across an ARCO gas station. What I saw made me stop in my tracks.

"Wow," I thought, looking up at the prices. "$4.20 a gallon for regular unleaded? That's cheap."

When you start thinking that $4.20 for gas is inexpensive (dream or reality), you know there's a problem.

Gas prices are ridiculous these days. My girlfriend Ramona recently wanted to go out to a nice dinner (i.e., pricey). So I took her to the Chevron station down the street for a couple of corn dogs and a fill-er-up for the ol' Toyota Corolla.

Total cost: $74.

It was the most expensive meal we've had since our "courting" days.

All these economists have discussed how to battle these higher prices. I, too, have some ideas.

Here are three:

Work from home. Do you work in an office? Quit. The cost of traveling to and from work eats up any salary you make. Working from home alleviates that expense.

Worried about finding an occupation that doesn't force you to leave the home? Fear not, for here are three fulfilling "work-from-home" occupations:

Telemarketer. For those who like sales.

976 Phone Sex Operator. For those who like connecting with people.

And my personal favorite:

Independent Communications Consultant.

Don't know what that is?

That's OK.

No one does.

That's the beauty of it.

Make your friends drive. Convince your friends that the pleasure of your company is so great, that they should always come to you if they want to hang out with you and drive wherever you all decide to go.

You'll end up having fewer friends. But on the plus side, you'll be surrounded by people who worship the ground you walk on.

Or have low self-esteem.

Either way, it's win-win.

Live in a square. Odds are, you live in Suburbia. If so, everything you'll ever need is in a two-mile radius, so you should never have to drive far.

Take me for example. Near me, there are restaurants, malls, dry cleaners, gyms, fast food establishments, movie theaters and a Starbucks.

So long as I never see my family, become a Phone Sex operator and convince my friends to start a weekly poker game near me (to curb those occassional Vegas urges), I'll never have to travel farther than the end of the block.

And here you thought there were no solutions to the gas crisis.

And now for this week's:

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE

I was visiting my good friends over at Rite Aid Pharmacy when I asked one of their workers whether they carried any ZipLoc bags.

"Yes," she replied.

And then she went back to putting pennies into the cash register.

"Um, could you tell me where they are?" I asked.

She looked back up.

"In the store, sir."

And back to the pennies.

And they say good help is hard to find.

(Given a choice between stopping global warming and going to nevdogg.blogspot.com ... we think you should go with option B.)

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That's right: The Nevdogg can now be found in podcast form!! I -- along with New York City voice actor and producer Michael Feldman -- have taken my blog...and essentially started talking about it. :-) It's Things That Matter With Mike And Nev. Check it out at http://www.mikeandnev.blogspot.com/

Hey, guess what? I'm trying to make a living writing blogs about the dumb things of everyday life. How am I doing this? With the help of the folks at iBizTraining.com, an online training resource that shows you how to run your own online business (Online Training, Online Business. My God, it fits!!). Find out more at http://www.ibiztraining.com/

The best sportswriters in the world are women (I have always said this). And the best in the world is none other than my girlfriend Ramona Shelburne, sports columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. Read more about her at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramona_Shelburne

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Stephanie Friedberg. She’s a writer, she writes a blog about the art of writing, and she’s one of the few women on Earth who understand Major League Baseball’s "infield shift" concept. Read what she has to say at http://www.thewaterglass.blogspot.com/