You Want Crude, I Will Give You Crude

When did all prices become negotiable? Since when is it cool to go around asking everyone for handouts?

Do people stroll over to the counter at the Gap, $100 sweater in hand and say " Don't you realize the price of sheep is at $20 a head? I'm just not paying this much for a wool sweater. You're going to have to do better than that if you want MY business."

Would you call a prostitute from the bar, "this bitch here is about to give it up for three drinks and taxi fare, what can you do to me, for less, I want it cheap or I wont be coming on you?"

People call their gas/oil companies all the fucking time and say things like "Osama bin Laden is dead and all those foreign people should be grateful and Nancy Grace said if there is justice then oil should be free and I KNOW that the price of that crude is cheaper now. I'm not paying that!"

Fine. But what about the oil and natural gas that is produced in North America? Huh smarty pants? That's still just as expensive as the foreign oil but not half as well travelled. You are correct, the price of crude oil has indeed gone down. Go ahead, I hear you. It has. Yeehaw. Means nothing. Tuna could be free but your local sushi joint will still charge you for it and they don't even have to heat it up. The crap you're buying to make your stuff go is not going to see a buck anything a gallon anytime soon. The price of shipping it, refining it storing it and delivering it has not budged a cent. Period. Its just not happening.
 
Oil companies don't send Indiana Jones with some cash and a boat over to Iraq to buy some barrels from a shady guy in a bazaar, haggle over a hookah load the barrels onto a camel cart back to the boat, plunk it on the boat, get it home and start throwing it in peoples' tanks. A few things, expensive things, have to happen first.

Just believe me when I say you don't want a barrel of crude oil. No more than you would want a sheep. That is the trouble with raw materials. They need to be cooked, they poop or bite or, whatever. Even if you did manage to procure a barrel of crude what would you do with it? Google home refining kits? Talk to your buddy who did real good in chemistry? Set up a little something in the shed? Why not, You made some damn good wine in there last summer!

You know what? Fuck it. Go buy a sheep some shears and some knitting needles. Go buy a barrel of crude a hose and a lighter.  Do what you have to do but please by all that is holy just shut up.