Yost milking Vampire Beast for all it's worth

Yost milking Vampire Beast for all it's worth

July 03, 2008
Well, the folks at the News & Record are still licking their wounds over getting beat so badly on the Billy Yow/vampire beast story that I broke in The Rhino last week – probably the most important story I've done in my six-plus years here.

So I'm feeling pretty confident about my job security this week. If the Hammers or anyone else complain to me about anything, or try to come down on me about something this week, I'll be like: "Hey, wait a minute; a question just randomly popped into my head. The question is: Who was it that broke the Billy Yow/vampire beast story? I can't remember. Was it News & Record county reporter Gerald Witt? No, that's not it. Hang on, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Was it The High Point Enterprise's David Nivens? No, it wasn't him – oh wait, I remember now; it was me, Scott D. Yost of The Rhino Times."

And then I'll say, nonchalantly, "Oh I'm sorry – I interrupted you, you were saying something …"

You know, it's like they say: Every chance you get, rest on your laurels. It's something like that that they say.

Also, the county commissioners just arrived at a budget, and that's the time of year when we all kind of kick back a little and take a breath.

Anyway, what all that means for you this week is that I don't have any really long involved column on the meaning of life or how to save your marriage (so, by the way, if you're thinking about getting a divorce, hold off at least a week) – instead, I just have a few things I'd like to say.

Exxon is usually the most expensive gasoline you can find and the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center is usually pretty good about its prices. So I was surprised the other day when I passed the Exxon at Lawndale Shopping Center and I noticed that regular gas there was $3.99 a gallon, while, when I passed by the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center, it was $4.09 a gallon – and I couldn't figure out at first why Exxon was cheaper because Exxon is never cheaper.

But, then, a couple of days later, after mulling the problem over for a while, a light bulb went off in my head and it hit me what had happened. Here's the solution to the riddle: It had taken me about seven or eight minutes to drive from Lawndale Shopping Center to Golden Gate Shopping Center, and I'll bet that the price of gas went up while I was driving down Cornwallis. I'll bet that, when I passed the Exxon on Lawndale, gas at the BP was lower than at that Exxon. But then, while I was driving down Cornwallis, the price of gas must have gone up 20 cents a gallon, and so I'll bet BP had just changed the price right before I got there. I'll bet if I had turned back and driven to the Exxon, it would have been like $4.19 a gallon by the time I got there.

Or actually, I guess it would have been more than that because that wouldn't have allotted for the amount gas would have gone up in the seven or eight minutes that it took me to get back to the Exxon.

I had a couple of beers at Speakeasy last Sunday with Jim Capo, who is a friend and fellow Libertarian – though Jim takes it more to the extreme than I do. Jim works for the John Birch Society and they send me their magazine, The New American, every month, which I frequently find informative – but often I think they're a little too oriented toward conspiracy theories.

However, the magazine does let you know things, like, for instance, that the government just put polar bears on the endangered species list even though the polar bear population has been rising for decades.

I like the polar bears as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that that is an interesting fact to know about polar bears, and there is a lot of stuff like that that I find out from Jim and his magazine that you don't get from the mainstream media.

But, like I said, a lot of the time he'll give me a DVD or send me something that makes it look like he's a little too quick to jump toward a conspiracy theory.

This week, Jim gave me a DVD. I haven't watched it yet, but I swear to you this it the exact title of it: "The European Union, could it happen here?"

No, Jim. It couldn't.

I feel highly confident, even before watching the DVD, that the European Union cannot happen here. I feel quite safe in saying that the only place anyone has to worry about a European Union happening is in Europe.

I once told Total Package Gift-wrapped in Hotness Roxanna "She puts the fox in Fox 8 News – so good luck trying to turn the channel when she's on" Haynes that "No one watches C-SPAN" (she used to work for them), but I did watch C-SPAN for three hours straight the other night and it was an eye-opening experience.

I made it a point to watch that night because they had on the heads of the top five oil companies testifying before Congress about high gas prices, and I was floored.

Before I watched that testimony, every time I filled up my gas tank, I always thought the high gas prices were due to the oil companies, and due to things like the fact that Exxon, for instance, last year literally made more profit than any company in the history of the world. I thought high gas prices were due largely to stuff like the fact that former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, when he retired, got, according to ABC News, a $400 million retirement package.

So I always thought that those profits, the ones that were the largest since the existence of the planet Earth, and that the compensation for executives, also as far as I can tell the largest in the history of the world, had something to do with the high price at the pumps, but the oil executives explained who the real culprit was that was giving us high oil prices, and I was floored. Do you know who the real culprit is that is giving us sky-high gas prices?

It turns out it's not the oil executives at all – it's the caribou in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It's like this. There's plenty of oil there that would bring our prices down but the evil caribou who don't care about us get in the way of us going to get it.

So who would have guessed it, but when you fill up your gas tank, you can thank the arctic caribou for the high prices because they're the ones doing it – not the oil executives with the $400 million retirement packages given by the companies that made more money last year than any other companies in the history of the world's existence.

Speaking of gas prices, everyone is always talking about saving gas by going to a four-day workweek, but that whole idea just baffles me. How in the world are you supposed to save on gas by extending the workweek by two days? It just doesn't make any sense. For one thing, you'd have people driving to work twice as much.

OK, but ignore that for a second and suppose, just suppose, that some how, some way, they found out that a four-day workweek really did save gas. Uh, hello? Do they not think that there would a massive worker revolt when employers tried to double everyone's workweek? I don't get any of that at all. I swear, sometimes I think I'm living on a different planet.

Also, speaking of the high gas prices that the arctic caribou are giving us: The price of gas is driving the price of everything else up too. I was at an outdoor basketball court the other day, and I overheard two teenagers talking and – I'm not joking – they were complaining about how much the price of drugs had gone up in the last few months.

I've been getting some good suggestions for the Rhinoceros Times Great 2008 Jail-naming Contest Extraordinaire as to what to name Sheriff BJ Barnes' new jail. Send your entries to Yost@rhinotimes.com.

The one I like the most so far is from Cindy Martin, who actually works in the Sheriff's Department from what I can tell. Here was Cindy's suggestion …

BJ's Bed and Breakfast.

So keep those entries coming.

I hope everyone has a nice Fourth of July – except for the evil caribou causing me aggravation at the pump. They can have a terrible week for all I care