I have always been a fan of Dave Barry's writing, and perspective on
history... Here is a short essay on the gas crisis.

-Paul

We're Just A Few Dinosaurs Short Of A Full Tank by Dave Barry

If you've been to a gas station lately, you have no doubt been shocked
by the prices: $1.67, $1.78, even $1.92. And that's just for Hostess
Twinkies. Gas prices are even worse. Americans are ticked off about
this, and with good reason: Our rights are being violated! The First
Amendment clearly states: 'In addition to freedom of speech, Americans
shall always have low gasoline prices, so they can drive around in
'sport utility' vehicles the size of minor planets." 

And don't let any so-called "economists" try to tell you that
foreigners pay more for gas than we do. Foreigners use metric gasoline,
which is sold in foreign units called "kilometers," plus they are 
paying
for it with foreign currencies such as the "franc," the "lira" and the
"doubloon." So in fact there is no mathematical way to tell WHAT they
are paying.

But here in the U.S. we are definitely getting messed over, and the
question is: What are we going to do about it? Step one, of course, is
to file a class-action lawsuit against the cigarette companies. They
have nothing to do with gasoline, but juries really hate them, so we'd
probably win several hundred billion dollars.

But that is a short-term answer. To truly solve this problem, we must
understand how the oil business works. Like most Americans, you 
probably
think that gasoline comes from the pump at the gas station. Ha ha! What
an idiot. In fact, the gasoline comes from tanks located UNDER the gas
station. These tanks are connected to underground pipelines, which 
carry
large oil tankers filled with oil from the Middle East.

But how did the oil get in the Middle East in the first place? To
answer that question, we must go back millions of years, to an era that
geologists call the Voracious Period, when giant dinosaurs roamed the
Earth, eating everything that stood in their path, except for broccoli,
which they hated. And then, one fateful day (Oct. 8), a runaway
asteroid, believed by scientists to be nearly twice the diameter of the
late Orson Welles, slammed into the Earth and killed the dinosaurs, who
by sheer bad luck all happened to be standing right where it landed. 
The
massive impact turned the dinosaurs, via a process called
photosynthesis, into oil; this oil was then gradually covered with a
layer of sand, which in turn was gradually covered by a layer of people
who hate each other, and thus the Middle East was formed.

For many years, the Middle East was content to supply the United States
with as much oil as we wanted at fair constitutional prices. But then
the major oil-producing nations -- Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and
Texas - got all snotty and formed an organization called OPEC, which
stands for "North Atlantic Treaty Organization." In the 1970s, OPEC
decided to raise prices, and soon the United States was caught up in a
serious crisis: The Disco Era.

It was horrible. You couldn't go to a bar or wedding reception without
being ordered onto the dance floor to learn "The Hustle."

At the same time, we also had an oil crisis, which was caused by the
fact that every motorist in the United States was determined to keep 
his
or her automobile gas tank completely filled at all times. As soon as
your gas gauge dropped from "Full" to "Fifteen-sixteenths," you'd rush
to a gas station and get in a huge line with hundreds of other 
motorists
who also had nearly full tanks. Also a lot of people, including me,
saved on heating oil by buying kerosene space heaters, which enabled us
to transform a cold, dank room into a cold, dank room filled with
kerosene fumes.

Buying gas and dancing "The Hustle" with people who smelled like
kerosene: That was the '70s.

So anyway, the oil crisis finally ended, and over time we got rid of
our Volkswagen Rabbits and replaced them with Chevrolet Suburbans
boasting the same fuel economy as the Pentagon. Now, once again, we 
find
ourselves facing rising gas prices, and the question is: This time, are
we going to learn from the past? Are we finally going to get serious
about energy conservation?

Of course not! We have the brains of mealworms! So we need to get more
oil somehow. As far as I can figure, there's only one practical way to
do this. That's right: We need to clone more dinosaurs. We have the
technology, as was shown in two blockbuster scientific movies, 
"Jurassic
Park" and "Jurassic Park Returns with Exactly the Same Plot." Once we
have the dinosaurs, all we need is an asteroid. Or, if he is available,
Michael Moore.

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