Will Blog For Bottled Water (PDS)

Were you aware that the price of gas has gone up?

I had managed to forget this fact, notwithstanding the incessant "man on the street" interviews conducted by the local news crews in our fair city. These hard breaking news stories establish that there alot of people out there who "just don't know how they're gonna make it" if the price of gas keeps going up! The tenor of these stories is that rising gas prices are no less than one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And to mix this metaphor until it is dizzy, a similar hobby horse of the media is the "crisis" of rising health care costs.

I say the news crews that continue to recycle these lame stories are nothing less than the Horsemen's Assess of the Apocalypse, and if that is not a technically correct term, well, it should be.

I was reminded of this the other day as I was standing in line to pay for some petrol at my local gas station. Ahead of me in line was yuppified lass whining to the owner about the price of gas. Little did she know that the owner is a rock ribbed conservative, with little patience for whiners or people who drive Volvo station wagons.

As she left the station, he gave me the knowing glance of someone who had just held his tongue. I knew exactly what he meant because it was difficult not to notice that our lass had bought, in addition to her petrol, a 12 ounce bottle of water for the bargain basement price of $1.25, which she could be seen nipping on as she huffed her way to her wagon.

Am I hallucinating, or did water not used to be free? I specifically recall during the 10 or so years I spent in elementary school that one could simply walk up to a water fountain and drink. I also recall a faucett in our house that distributed water, more or less on command. Even today I have seen these contraptions, at least here and there.

Why are there no breaking stories on our local news about how the price of water has gone up? I am no math whiz, so can somebody help me with how large a % increase is involved in going from $0.00 for unlimited quantities of a commodity to $1.25 for 12 ounces of that same commodity?

How did media in this country become so irony-impaired?

This last is a question for investigative journalism that not even a man on the street interview can solve.