R.I. P., George Carlin

Just when we need him most, George Carlin has left us. He died earlier this week of heart failure at the age of 71. I absolutely loved his brand of comedy. It was always devastatingly honest, sometimes profane, but always hilarious, especially when he talked about his Irish Catholic childhood. Having grown up Catholic myself and remembering the terrors of Catholic school (where we gave the nuns nicknames like "Sister Mary Attilla the Hun", "Sister Mary Adolph Hitler", "Sister Mary Herman Goehring" and other nasty nicknames to describe what we felt was their unique brand of torture), Carlin's description of his experiences truly hit home for me. He also pioneered the "Seven Dirty Words You Cannot Say on Television", which eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling that those words indeed could not be used on TV. I imagine that Carlin must have had some interesting things to say about that. I would guess that he's up there somewhere now, hobnobbing with the likes of Richard Pryor, who was also devastatingly funny. Each of these comedians used brutal honesty in such a funny way that you could not help but laugh out loud. These were the guys whose comedy I grew up on and whose skewed view of the world made me laugh out loud, and their passing has left a real void in the world of comedy. We need their likes now that we have such buffoons in Washington and an increasingly interesting presidential election campaign in full swing that pits the first black candidate against an old war hero who is a product of the VietNam era. I wish Pryor were around right now to make some kind of commentary on Obama's candidacy. We don't really have anyone who practices that kind of raw brand of humor that was so much a part of Pryor's and Carlin's acts. I can honestly say that they are sorely missed and always will be. But we have plenty of recordings and hours of recorded concerts and television appearances to watch to remind us of who they were and what kinds of things they skewered on a regular basis. George Carlin, I miss you already. You still make me laugh even now at the things you were making fun of 30-40 years ago when I was young. We sure could use your unique take on things right now, with an illegal war raging in Iraq, skyrocketing gas prices, a bunch of buffoons and fools running Washington and a presidential campaign raging on after an agonizingly long primary season that probably disenchanted and turned off a lot of potential voters. Well, we can laugh at what you left us. Thank goodness for that.

AS IF SOARING GAS PRICES AREN'T ENOUGH........

I read in the newspaper today (Saturday) that oil has now reached $142 a barrel, and that it can be blamed squarely on the sinking dollar and the fact that investors are grabbing on to oil futures as a hedge against inflation, so it's both the dollar value and speculators that are to blame for the skyrocketing price of oil. Add to that the news that if we attack Iran (more than likely that we will before Bush is done screwing the Middle East), they will use oil as a weapon against us, meaning that oil prices could well hit over $200 a barrel before Bush is done with us. Add to that the fact that I also read today that home heating prices are going to soar this winter by at least 50%, and it has me wondering just how on earth I am going to survive financially. I'm already paying $100 a month on budget billing for my heat and I don't keep my apartment that warm as it is. I lower the thermostat to 58º when I am not home and when I am home, I only set it to 68º. We have vinyl replacement windows and new vinyl siding on the house, underneath of which is exterior insulation. We also have interior insulation and fiberglass upstairs in the attic, so my apartment is snug and warm in the winter months and does not necessitate setting the thermostat very high. I was talking to a friend a few days ago who lives in a five bedroom house who said that her budget billing is much lower than mine and she has a gas dryer, gas water heater and gas heat and doesn't pay as much as me, leaving me to wonder why I am paying so much for heat. I wonder if I've got a leak somewhere but I cannot afford to pay for an energy audit to find out. I wonder how much lower I will have to set the thermostat this winter just to survive. All I can hope for is a mild winter that will offset this past very cold winter. I know that there will be blame on environmentalists if energy prices continue their meteoric soar into the stratosphere. Well, I am convinced that we can have clean and renewable energy if we just put our minds to it. We should have started back when Jimmy Carter told us to lower our thermostats and wear sweaters. Instead, Republicans swept into office and told us that energy prices were cheap and go ahead and splurge. We're paying for that negligence now.

I just wonder what can be done to strengthen the dollar and I begin to wonder if it is being artificially depressed to make a few people betting on oil futures a lot of quick money and to make American goods cheaper to sell overseas. You have to wonder about that. As of today, the dollar is worth 63¢ against the Euro and 50¢ against the British Pound. Pretty sad. The Euro is worth $1.57 and the Pound is worth $1.99, making it cheaper for foreigners to come over here instead of making it more affordable for Americans to travel overseas. Any hopes I ever had of returning to Europe are pretty well gone forever unless the dollar comes back up in value. Part of what is depressing it is our rampant trade deficit, especially with China. As that massive country gains in industrial power (thanks largely in part to US off-shoring of industrial jobs to cheaper labor there), the trade deficit is bound to continue growing out of control unless it is somehow reined in. Not being an economist, I haven't a clue as to how to do that, but I don't even know if a change in administration in Washington will be that successful in turning things around in the short term. I rather doubt it. Once inside the Beltway, people in Washington become more entrenched in a certain kind of mentality. They fall prey to special interests and lobbyists who they see as their best chance to do campaign fundraising, and the fact that it costs so much now just to win a Congressional seat means that they never really stop campaigning, even once they become a Representative or a Senator. In fact, they can't really ever afford to completely step off the campaign bus and just do what we elected them to do. And that it's come to this is very sad. In the meantime, we're headed toward a slow economic collapse the likes of which we haven't seen in almost 80 years, only this time, it's going to be much, much worse. We're already part of the way there as it is, and it scares the hell out of me that money has gotten so tight that I can barely make it through a pay period. Well, come fall when I am hopefully a bit more mended from injuries, it looks as if I'm just going to have to get a second part time job just to make ends meet. I don't see any way around it. I'm not making it on my current income as prices escalate far faster than I can keep up with. Gas, food, health care, heat....it's all rising faster than the rate of inflation and I can't keep up. I'm drowning under these rapidly rising price hikes and sadly, there's absolutely no relief in sight. The news media doesn't make it easier and all they can say is to be prepared for even steeper price hikes in the near future. And all I can ask is, why, and how are we to survive this rampant rate of inflation?