Our Biggest Threat.

Have I ever told you about how gas stations are killing America? It’s true, the gas station is the single most destructive force to human health in the country. It contains all the necessary ingredients to destroy the American people.

First and foremost there is the gasoline, diesel, or kerosene itself. Which, let’s face it people, burning dinosaurs pollutes the shit out of our planet. From exhaust emissions to oil spills, few things contribute as much pollution to the planet as internal combustion engines. That’s just science, and only idiots argue with science. And I don't want to hear any of that methane from cow shit talk. That can be addressed by switching their diet. 

Now I do love driving, we associate driving with freedom. Freedom to go anywhere you want whenever you want. As long as you can afford the gas and a reliable car that will get you there. But can’t we do better?  I would love to drive a car that got 100MPG or didn’t even use gas. I dream of a day when recharging stations replace gas stations. Instead of filling up with gas we would fill up with water or swap batteries. How awesome would that be?

B. Cigarettes and other tobacco products. Cigarettes/cigars, chew, and snus and their ilk cause cancer. This is not up for debate. It’s fucking science. I say this as an ex-smoker who loved to smoke. But you know what I love more? Breathing and not coughing, hiking to high elevation and not having to stop every four feet to catch my breath.

 Now I don’t want to outlaw cigarettes, this is America, smoke if you want to. Our country has a long tradition of raising tobacco. But sell that shit at the local tobacco store or cigar shop. If you want to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids, don’t make them available on every corner. Sell them in bars, liquor stores, casinos; you know places where kids can’t go.

I know some of you are saying, but the tobacco products are behind the counter where kids can’t get them. Really, you don’t know any underage kids that look old enough to buy cigarettes? You don’t know any high school kids with full beards? I’m not saying that it would totally prevent underage smoking, but it takes a lot more courage to walk into a liquor store to buy smokes, than it does to walk into the gas station and ask the kid behind the counter to sell you smokes.

That brings us to quite possibly the biggest threat to the American public: the “food” that is sold in gas stations/convenience stores. I put the word food in quotes because; let’s face it, most of that shit is barely edible let alone deserving to be called food. Yeah you can eat it, but it will probably kill you. It’s all made of highfructose corn syrup, fats, starch, glucose, sucrose, fructose, and lots of other chemicals nobody can pronounce except the assholes who invented them.

Yes I know I listed sugar four times, there is a lot of fucking sugar in gas stations. There is the ridiculous selection of candy; both bars and bags. I saw a fucking 5 pound chocolate bar for sale at a gas station during the holiday season one year. Five fucking pounds, who needs a five pound chocolate bar? The almost infinite number of bottled sugar beverages, most of which don’t even contain water anymore. Seriously, have you looked at the ingredients on a can of soda, I challenge you to find the water in it. Go ahead, I’ll wait………..you couldn’t could you unless you buy the expensive, natural or throwback sodas. I don’t think even the slushies have water in them. It’s just frozen chemicals, and forget about your favorite sports drink, it’s just sugar water. 

I don’t know which is worse, all the sugar drinks or the sugar free drinks. Aspartame is what is used in place of sugar in most of your mass marketed diet drinks, unless specified on the label as something else. Aspartame is one atom away from arsenic, molecularly. ONE ATOM! So which would you prefer, super sugar made from corn or what is essentially a poison that can kill a person with a tiny dose. Getting thirsty?

But all of this pales in comparison with the actual “food” products sold in gas stations. The breakfast sandwiches that arrive frozen are assembled, microwaved, and put under a heat lamp, the lunch sandwiches that are the same thing just without “egg,” the frozen pizza, hot dogs, tornados (rolled up tacos placed on the rolling warmer thing like hot dogs). If you look at the ingredients list of anything of these items you would be hard pressed to find anything you would recognize, let alone pronounce.

And the cashiers at these places are required to ask you if you want candy, or sodas, or anything else their corporate task masters are making them push. They know our brains are hard wired to want fat, salt, and sugar because these things occur sparingly in nature. So when our hunter-gatherer ancestors happened upon a source of one of these three, they ate as much as they could not knowing when they would find it’s like again.

Granted a person never has to set foot in a gas station/convenience store, theoretically, with pay at the pump and what not. But, that’s another thing that bothers me about gas stations. Why the fuck do they need to authorize my account for $100 when I purchased $35 worth of gas, and then not charge me for it until almost a week later! Don’t we have significant tech to allow them to charge me for the exact amount I purchased when I fucking purchased it?

I dream of a world, where gas stations are replaced by charging stations, pay at the pump charges you for what you buy when you buy it, poisonous junk “food” is replaced by healthy food, and cigarettes are sold at tobacco shops and liquor stores. Tis a fool’s dream I know, but wouldn’t it be wonderful.

Oh I almost forgot, why the fuck are we still paying nine-tenths of a penny for gas? Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but check next time you get gas. The price will be $3.499 or something close to that. It’s a trick of advertising. So it costs a penny to lift the handle. Can you believe that shit.