I generally like my Congressional representative, Sander Levin. He recently sent out an e-mail to constituents outlining some possible actions Congress could take to try to make a dent in the price of oil and gasoline. I didn't think I would end up quite as negative about them as I did, but the more I wrote the more... well, you take a look:

Suspend Further Shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Congress has today acted on this one. Their measure would suspend shipments until oil prices return to $75 a barrel. Uh, good luck with that. The reserve is 97% full, according to Mr. Levin, and that's not too bad. But, before anyone gets the idea of starting to drain the reserve just to reduce prices, does anyone remember what happened in the 1970s when we actually ran low on petroleum? Lines at gasoline stations were not fun in the least. That's what the strategic reserve is supposed to prevent.

Suspend the Federal Gas Tax.

I've already come out against this. I still think it's a short-sighted notion that will only derail road construction projects and increase the deficit.

Crack Down on Price Gouging.

I saw the bill they considered last year. It defined gouging as a price that's "unconscionable." Now, would someone please define "unconscionable" in terms that are legally enforceable? It's OK, they can't either.

Drilling in Arctic Refuge.

Yes, let's take it out on the caribou. They don't vote, anyway. Besides, it took $125/barrel oil prices to make drilling in Alaska and shipping it to American refineries economically viable.

Boost Fuel Efficiency Standards.

This is OK. But really, if consumers aren't already demanding fuel efficient cars now, and car makers aren't already listening to demands, then we're screwed anyway.

Invest in Advanced Vehicle Technologies.

This is good. Of course, instead of government intervention, maybe a better incentive would be to let oil and gasoline prices stay high, so companies would be willing to develop these technologies and consumers would buy them.

Yeah, I'm sounding like a conservative with my naysaying. But these really are weak proposals by people who otherwise could do nothing but watch prices rise. What bothers me most are two things left out in Mr. Levin's message, two ideas that could actually reduce the amount we spend on getting around:

1. Support mass transit options in and between cities. Take some of this federal money the House wants to throw around on the options above, and give it to localities so they can build and maintain rail and bus systems. Then find a way to get commuters to see that they work.
   
   
2. Convince citizens to use less gasoline. Yes, I remember what a downer it was when President Carter advocated this in the late 1970s. And I'm not talking about cutting the highway speed limit back to 55 mph again. But there are things we can do without any help from the government at all. Walk. Carpool. Bike. Use the existing transit systems. Organize errands so the driving is efficient. Telecommute. I mean, we have the Internet now, which we didn't have in 1977— we can accomplish a lot without even leaving home.
   
   
3. Oh, here's a third one: Somehow provide incentives that keep residential and commercial development from spreading out into the hinterlands. Make it worthwhile for businesses and people to stay closer to city centers, where the infrastructure already exists and people don't have to drive 50 miles just to get to work.

The proposals in Levin's e-mail rise out of the hope that we can go back to ridiculously inexpensive gasoline. That's understandable; we've built our life on it. But it's unsustainable, and as long as we keep clinging to our old gasoline-based transportation model, we'll soon be going nowhere.

First, it's worth noting that during the latter part of last week, I felt as if I was on the verge of coming down with a cold or something. This will explain things, somewhat.

Saturday, I was busily pulling weeds in my front yard, destroying botany on a small scale, when my neighbor offered to bring his chain saw over to cut down some trees that were growing along my back yard fence, where they shouldn't have. Last year these trees were knocking my privacy fence over through their exuberance. So we destroyed botany on a larger scale and chopped them down. And later I mowed grass.*

Then on Sunday, the Mother's Day celebration took place at my house. We made pizzas from scratch, which is a lot of fun. There were four cigarette smokers in my house. It was raining, so they couldn't go outside.

So it should be no surprise that at around 7:00 p.m., my sinuses completely gave up and started outputting as if they were the Niagara River heading into Lake Ontario. Five hours later, they achieved something I thought would not be possible: A sinus headache while the sinuses were still draining.

I think sinuses are proof that Intelligent Design is a hoax. Yes, it can be argued there was some contributory negligence in my case, between the tree dust and the smoke and all. But still.

So if anyone's looking for me at an open mic night tomorrow, um, sorry. *achoo!snort!*

*Sometimes I wonder why I don't move into an asphalt parking lot.

I found this sign on my lawn tonight when I got home:

It's not a whole sign, actually. It's an adhesive patch that looks like it would go on one side of an orange road work sign. Now, why I-96, I don't know, since the closest part of that freeway to me is about 15 miles away as the crow flies over a lot of urban landscape. It's also water-damaged, under the peel-off paper (on account of all the rain we had today), which doesn't affect the front at all.

I always wanted a real highway sign for decor. But they're kind of hard to get if you aren't a highway department. This might be as close as I ever get. So I'll try to not complain that it isn't an actual interstate interstate highway.

Today's fun link of the day (as if I do this every day, or even every week) is Cover vs. Original, http://www.cover-vs-original.com/. It's a website where two versions of a song are posted and users vote for which one is better, the original or the remake. Guaranteed to start good-natured arguments among music fans everywhere, huh?

This came up because Dave heard "Give a Little Bit" on the radio yesterday, but it didn't sound like Supertramp. It was the Goo Goo Dolls' cover, I replied. But then I was curious as to why the Goos covered it — was it for a movie? The first non-YouTube link in Google was to Cover vs. Original, where I not only learned that the Goos version was just a live version from a concert, but that the voters there thought Supertramp did it better. (They're right.)

So now I've been checking out other songs. I don't know how old the site is, but there are a few gaps. They'll let users post new pairings, though. So perhaps someday we'll get the truth of who did "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" better, the Beatles or Elton John. (I'd expect that to come out 50/50, honestly.)

Oh Oh Oh—Almost forgot: Gordon Lightfoot is going to be on CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos tonight. There will be a video clip on The Hour's website soon after. Fans may squee at will.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has made me almost unspeakably furious with her comments today on the talking-head shows. How dare she set herself apart from so-called elites when she is inarguably an elite herself? How dare she continue to espouse actions like the gas tax moratorium despite what higher and higher budget deficits do to our economy? Where will the United States get financing for our deficits when the dollar collapses even further? To say nothing of how will our roads get fixed and how will we ever learn to live on less petroleum?

I'm no elite, but I'm educated, and I'll be damned if I continue taking the bashing that is being laid out against people who have bothered to learn something about how the world works.

I'm so angry because the choice in November may well come down to someone I hate versus someone I can't trust. What am I supposed to do then? What are we all supposed to do? Hell, what are we supposed to do in August when we finally settle on one Democratic candidate and we're supposed to all be comrades in arms again? There might not be enough Valium in the world to make that happen.

The political discourse during this interminable presidential campaign has caused America yet more damage on top of the ruinous regime of George W. Bush. I don't want to be ashamed of this country, but our leaders are leaving me no reasonable alternative.

(source: Clinton spurns economists on gas tax [article may get more revisions as the day goes on].)

Tonight, for the first time, I put more than $50 worth of gas in my gas tank.

I normally gas my four-door sedan up once every eight days on average. That doesn't count trips to Louisville or up north for music festivals.

Suddenly I'm rather panic-stricken over the whole thing. I'm sure I'll come up with a plan to deal with this, financially, eventually. But at the moment, it looks rather frightening, especially when I consider that gas will only keep going up. I mean, I only paid $3.64 per gallon tonight, which is really cheap compared to what everyone else pays.

I'm not soliciting solutions. Just, y'know, maybe a group hug or something.

I reduced the amount of clutter in my house, freeing up storage space I can reuse, by taking old computer and stereo equipment to be recycled. The Best Buy near me worked with Great Lakes Electronics Recycling for an Earth Day related event to collect old electronic equipment today from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. free of charge. (link to flyer for event) They got from me two desktop computers, one laptop, one monitor, two scanners, and a box of miscellaneous peripherals, along with two dead cassette decks.

I got there around 2:45, and there were ... what, boatloads? Metric fuck-tons? A ginormous amount? Lots of electronic junk in the parking lot. I know why they were going to close at 4: so they could spend the rest of the daylight hours dealing with the stuff. It was amazing, and you know a lot of this stuff cost hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars when it was new. Then it got superseded by something shinier and eventually you get Mount Junk in a parking lot.

The recycling firm has a well-defined method for dealing with the electronics. They use shredders on the hard discs and other storage media to ensure the data thereon doesn't fall into the wrong (or any) hands. Everything else is separated and handled in a safe way. Well, I assume it is; I didn't stay to watch that part, but GLE's website says it is.

Best Buy probably wanted us to drop off our old stuff and then go into the store to buy new stuff, but I didn't have time today. But this did add to their goodwill in my eyes.

In 1976, there was a tour of the Great Lakes by tall ships, as part of the festivities around the U.S. Bicentennial. My family went to Marine City (along the St. Clair River) to see them, then drove down to Belle Isle in Detroit to see them again a couple of hours later. My mom took this photo of me watching a ship motor down the river—there was not enough wind or seas for them to have the sails up. They probably would've had sails up a few miles north where Lake Huron funnels into the St. Clair River. Boy, would THAT have been something to see.

I want to say, now that I've been poking around on the Internet, that the ship in the photo might be the Norwegian Ship Christian Radich. I can't say for sure as the resolution in my original photo is not good enough, but I'm almost certain the ship was part of the Great Lakes tour.

Yes, I actually did own a fishing cap advertising an American brand of beer. I was just 14! I was still finding myself!

They're talking about transit here again. The Detroit Free Press and WDET's Detroit Today show reported on Tuesday about a plan to build a light rail line from the State Fairgrounds to downtown. It's a bit less ambitious plan than the previous incarnations, but analysts say that's why it's gone further. Maybe if they get that one built, and it gets enough use, the idea to expand it will be considered.

As good as it would be to have some part of a transit system somewhere in this car-bound area, what's planned so far wouldn't help the thousands of people who commute suburb-to-suburb. One of the main obstacles to that idea are the many "competing interests", as cited in the Freep article. Maybe gasoline prices will make those competing interests reconsider their positions, though, I'm sure that prices will never go down below, well, $3/gallon, even.

For years now, I've been driving I-696 from Warren to Farmington Hills, wishing there was a light rail line down the middle of the freeway—y'know, similar to DC's Metro. Boy, would that be nice. It might be an economic spur, too.

The Freep article mentioned is "Plan takes shape for travel by light-rail" (Detroit Free Press, April 22, 2008)

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert Saturday night was highly impressive. The orchestra is nearly always sharp, but they seemed to be exceptionally forceful and persuasive this time. Hans Graf was the guest conductor, and I have much appreciation for the performance and interpretation he led.

Mozart's fifth violin concerto made me smile a lot at how cleverly the various themes would pop up as the concerto progressed. The soloist, Vadim Repin, is astonishingly skilled yet was no mere technician, giving the music much expressiveness. He rewarded the audience ovations with an encore, the same encore from Friday's concert as mentioned in the Freep's review, a fun reading of a Sicilian tune in the fashion of Paganini. The audience chuckled at the tricks and flourishes. Dave commented that he looked like "a good natured fellow"; he came off as very likeable. (No, we didn't go meet him during the intermission. Maybe we should've.)

After intermission came Bruckner's 9th symphony, which was unfinished at Bruckner's death and STILL ran over sixty minutes. I had spent some time listening to a recording of it, trying to grasp it better but not really succeeding. Sitting in the concert hall, I *got* it, though. The first movement was especially grand and emotional. The orchestra was twice as big for the Bruckner as for the Mozart, and it easily projected all the emotion Bruckner intended. I heard so much that I missed in the recording and have a much better appreciation now.

This season the DSO has featured the great 9th symphonies. The last one is, of course, Beethoven's, and that's scheduled for the weekend after Memorial Day.* I'm sure it's been sold out since September, but boy would that be a great concert.

Dave and I have determined that the seats we had, row N on main floor on the next-to-leftmost aisle, are the best for acoustics that we've experienced. In other locations of Orchestra Hall, the horns might have overpowered the strings, especially in the Bruckner 9th where the horns are so prominent. But not in this location; the blend was perfect. And there's legroom, which is missing just five rows further back. I feel obliged to say that we got main floor tickets because the DSO runs a special for most of their March and April concerts, two tickets for $49; main floor is usually $64 each.

*Previously I said that the Beethoven 9th was Memorial Day weekend. Also it said that Bruckner's was next-to-last, which is wrong; Mahler's 9th comes in early May. (edited April 22, 2008)