Violent Beauty

TWO SORTA RECENT VIDEO GAME ad campaigns juxtaposed tableaux of in-game combat with music of stunning emotion. If you'll permit a pair of YouTube links, these are worth sharing.

Gears of War, featuring the Michael Andres/Gary Jules cover of Tears for Fears's "Mad World"



Halo 3, featuring Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude in D flat major (direct link if the video's a bit jerky):



Perhaps I'm an old softie, or a sucker either for sad piano music or Tears for Fears, but both of these choke me up a little.

The Mouth on Me!

I'M APPARENTLY BECOMING A CARD in my old age. The key to humor? Know your audience. Witness this exchange last night at the local supermarket.

I was using the self-checkout station, which in this store abuts the customer service desk. The 20-something female desk clerk watched me scan and bag my two items, the second of which evoked an error message when I bagged it — the weight and the item's UPC didn't match.

I rebagged it, only to get the same message. The clerk said, "Sometimes it needs to adjust itself."

After 20 seconds of waiting, I smirked and said in a Paulie Walnuts tone, "I gotta adjust myself sometimes, too, but I don't take this long!" To which she laughed loudly.

I won't be opening for Carlin anytime soon, but it's nice to get a 100% positive audience response now and again.

"God Will Be Cut"

I PICKED A HELLUVA MOVIE to watch just earlier during my post-workout "cooldown" of 10 minutes on an elliptical machine: Kill Bill Volume 1. Even though the guide said it was on Telemundo, I flicked it on for the duration. The language barrier proved meaningless; I entered as the Crazy 88 were zooming through that Tokyo tunnel as Beatrix Kiddo streaked behind in her yellow Bruce Lee suit, followed closely by the epic entry of O-Ren and her crew to "Battle Without Honor or Humanity." Yeah, my pulse wasn't dropping out of triple digits any time soon.

I was hoping Telemundo might be as loco in its attitude toward violence as it is toward boisterous, Benny Hill–style T&A. No such luck; when the luscious Julie Dreyfus got a shoulder-height manicure, the chambara gore-gasm was trimmed as neatly as her arm. Likewise the near-bloodless snuffs of the 88s who tried the Bride's Hanzō sword in battle. I ended my cooldown before the Gauntlet-style slayfest of the remaining 88s, which probably was also pruned way back.

Which reminded me of the approach I thought Tarantino ought to take when releasing the DVD. A good stretch of the House of Blue Leaves fight is presented in black and white, partly as chambara homage, partly to toe the rating back out of NC-17 territory. Now in Japan, you can get a version of the DVD with this battle in full color throughout. I thought Region One viewers ought to have a menu option that, in homage to Steve Buscemi's brief role as waiter "Buddy Holly" in Pulp Fiction, would offer two choices: "Burnt to a Crisp" (with the Blue Leaves sequence's original black and white) or "Bloody as Hell" (in glorious arterial color).

Considering Tarantino is taking his sweet-ass time in crafting the combined Parts 1 and 2 version, it might not be too late to get this suggestion to him. Someone contact his people. He can have this idea for free.

Clouds Parting Over Work Future?

I'VE RECEIVED SOME HOPEFUL SIGNS regarding the remote office that will house the new staff on my publication. I've had extensive recent contact with the entire new staff, and they all seem very excited to get rolling on the magazine. They flew out to get some basic training from me and my outgoing managing editor on running the book, which we delivered in small yet informative bites; this meal appears to have satisfied their appetite for details.

I'd originally had trepidations about their two-day visit. As you may have gathered from my recent Bullet Points! post several days ago, I've not been in the best of moods lately. Part of it was related to anxiety over whether I'd be get along with the new Central City crew and not feel lonely at the office without the traditional group of coworkers with whom to chat. Fortunately, the incoming editor-in-chief is very gung-ho over the potential for the book, and I've already exchanged work with my new direct boss. In fact, I've tutored him on two of my regular columns, which at least demonstrated at an early stage for him that I am dedicated to keeping the book rolling. From what I gathered, he was way hep to getting such a detailed guide (though a bit Dickensian in length).

So I don't feel as "done" as I thought I was earlier in the month. Everyone seemed very happy with the introduction I helped to prepare for them, and my outgoing managing editor wrote a great review for me (which may or may not founder on the rocks of fiscal attenuation when we talk wampum). For now, it seems like I'll have a home there and the chance to pick up skills and contacts for what else I would want to do.

Still really not sure what that might be.

If You're Indian or Italian, Don't Read This!

REGARDLESS OF YOUR NATIONALITY, welcome to this description of my first culinary mashup. I'd never had risotto before, but I dig the concept. I also dig curry. I decided to introduce them to each other. Oh, the heresy!

To backtrack, while eating the Whole Foods Indian hot-tray food this past Saturday, I reflected on the ingredients. There's a fair number of good veggies in various curries. Indian cuisine was my gateway to sampling cauliflower, for instance. I suspected there was a way to prepare Indian-style vegetables on the home front, if I had the right recipe.

I've also nursed a recurring fascination with risotto. I don't know how many of the local Italian restaurants offer it, so I suspected I'd have to make my own. It seemed labor intensive, but after reading about the basics of risotto in How to Cook Everything, I revised that impression.

Sunday dinner left me with a spare, whole Costco roast chicken. Lots of free meat. I'd also bought broccoli and cauliflower, in the hopes of digging up some way, on the Net, of making a veggie curry from them to serve over rice.

Then I thought, why not satisfy two urges in one pot?

Trader Joe's sells arborio rice and vegetable stock. (I often find chicken stock overwhelming, especially when reduced, as it would be in this recipe.) I grabbed both. I already had spices and some of the other elements of risotto. So I figured I'd give it a whirl, with a trip to the local pizzeria as backup in case I conjured a funky ruin.

The risotto recipes in Bittman called for butter as the primary fat, as do most Indian dishes, but I had also seen olive oil used in some online risotto recipes. So I started with 3 tablespoons of oil, which I heated over a medium flame along with 2 teaspoons of Penzey's Hot Curry Powder, to bloom the spices.

Once it began foaming, I added ¾ cup of arborio rice, or half the amount in one of the Bittman recipes. I'd also begun heating about half the recommended amount of stock, 2½ cups, in a saucepan. I stirred the rice until it was evenly coated with spicy oil, then let it heat until it steamed slightly.

At that point, I added my first ladle of stock. A plume of curried steam greeted me. The rice immediately began absorbing the stock, which led me to turn the heat down a touch. I added a couple of shakes of Penzey's Hot Chili Powder, a few grinds of pepper, and a bit of salt, then set the microwave timer for 10 minutes. I added more stock bit by bit, and then stirred the rice every so often until it began to "tighten up." Once it seemed a little more dry than wet, I added more stock. Very scientific.

At the 10-minute mark, I added 3 oz. of finely cubed chicken and a double-handful each of broccoli and cauliflower chopped small. An extra amount of stock allowed them to begin blanching. The rice at this point still had a crunchy core. I set the microwave for another 10 minutes, then continued to add stock and stir as before.

I eventually used the entire box of stock, as by 15 minutes, I was running low of the heated stuff in the saucepan, and there was about a half-cup or so left in the box, a small amount I couldn't imagine using over the rest of the week. The trick now was to get the rice to the proper level of doneness while cooking off, or inducing the absorption of, the remaining stock.

I managed to bring it home well at the 20-minute mark: not too loose, still easily stirred, but with tender rice all the way through. The veggies were cooked but not mushy, and the chicken was beginning to shred nicely. I didn't add any more olive oil at the end; some recipes call for a last dab of butter to finish, but I decided not to up the calories any further (this essentially is a starch-based meal, which I usually try to avoid for weeknight dinners). I filled a plate and sampled it.

This would've made a great cold-weather meal, as its physical and spice-based heat would've beaten a heating blanket soundly for warmth. I feel I succeeded in crafting a basic curry risotto.

And a helluva lot of it too: Even after two servings, I still had half a pan full of it. I'd heard that storing risotto and resurrecting it the next day was sometimes dodgy, but I just covered the pan and placed the whole thing, once cooled a bit, into the fridge. With any luck, there's still enough moisture in it to warm and loosen the mix tomorrow over the stove.

Considering this was a cobbled-together, unorthodox take on risotto, I feel qualified to follow a more traditional recipe for it, assuming this stuff is indeed good tomorrow. Leftovers are always nice. It also let me sample Trader Joe's vegetable stock, which might be a good base for a chicken curry or basmati-rice/veggie recipe. So my first experiment in cultural mix-and-match was a success.

I sense spicy doings ahead, and I haven't even gotten to Vegas yet.

Schizohedron Bullet Points! for 5/3/08

SOME SCATTERED SAMPLINGS FROM RECENT days, by way of a catch-up:

• Fitness is progressing well. I have been hitting the gym an average of six days out of seven for a few weeks now. Having gotten this habit in tune, I still need to improve my dinner habits, but further results will pay off such diligence. Besides, I'm nearing a week of free-range grazing; I have about one month before the Vegas trip, where experience tells me I will gorge lustily. I want to go there in good shape, so if I slack off on exercise there, I won't have much catching up to do upon my return. Wynn Las Vegas is rumored to have a grand spa and gym, but . . . well, it is Wynn Las Vegas. Temptation comes with the territory.

• I had weird dreams or nightmares all week. Ordinarily I'd record them upon awakening and share them here. Not this time; they're best forgotten. The nightmares disrupted my sleep patterns. The non-nightmare dreams featured an unusually large number of people I know and one I don't: Vice President Dick Cheney. I don't have enough to deal with that I gotta be haunted by that fuck in my one legit, unassailable refuge?

• I feel like I'm done at work. The artist is not going to follow his job to Central City. When he leaves, I will be alone out of the fine crew I met upon starting there. My few interactions with my new Central City coworkers (can you call them "coworkers" if they're not in the same office?) have been positive, and I'm told my aid will be crucial in managing the transition and division of labor among that bunch. But while writing a guide to how I hunt for and write up stories for two of my columns, even though this was going to help me lighten my workload and plan ahead on the tasks I retain, I felt like I was giving away some of my reasons for being there. And in the back of my head I still imagine they'll keep me as long as it takes for the Central City group to be working, then hire my replacement out there. My best hope is to revise my resume, take what I can by way of connections, skills, and money, and brace for the next eventuality. At minimum, working with an entirely remote workgroup may be good training for freelancing, into which I've been looking lately (with aid and encouragement from the excellent Amy. How an inexperienced freelance editor and writer like myself would find work in what all rational observers are calling a recession, though, is a non-rhetorical question. And that's not even addressing the healthcare question.

• To my surprise, being single has been upsetting me these past several weeks, for the first time in years. The ratio of days when I don't care about living solo, to those when I do, has dropped from 75:1 to about 3:1. These are not odds that this gambler enjoys seeing rise on this Kentucky Derby Day.

Penny for Some Thoughts at the Five and Dime

A HALF-DECAYED IRONING BOARD cover compelled me to walk to my local five-and-dime for a replacement. Coupons in our town savings mailer sweetened the deal: 15% off, which, combined with a stroll to the store instead of a drive, helped me stack monetary and gas savings. Keeping the spending local, rather than pouring it into a big-box store whose profits are counted out of state, also had appeal. This trip was dipped in win.

I combined this run with a drop-off of books at the library and a stop at the dry cleaners — another key coupon-use center — with some work shirts. Once at the five-and-dime, I wandered the ware-crammed aisles for a spell, eventually triangulating on the housewares via the kitchen goods. A display of various board covers awaited, as did someone who recognized me.

A woman in her fifties said, "I know you." I couldn't place her — a friend of my mother's? Local restaurant owner? Someone from a doctor's office? — so I let her continue. "We used to work together. I left [the company] in December."

I still didn't recognize her, not having memorized all the office names and faces by that point, but her citation of last-year's layoffs was recognition enough. She said she'd heard about the company's most recent play — the move of jobs to Central City — and added a depressing detail I hadn't heard: Those who did move out there would have their salaries cut to match the local market.

From my perusal of the Central City real estate guides placed in the lunchroom for those considering relocation, I had noticed a striking difference in rent and home prices. I'd suspected the new additions to my magazine staff would be paid less than the local veterans who'd left. The rents (about 50–70% what I'm paying here for the same digs; my full NJ rent would get a whole townhouse) and home prices (the bubble-inflated price of my parents' average suburban home on a quarter-acre would get a multiacre estate, an empty plot to McMansionize, or a palatial condo) listed in the guides confirmed this hunch. But somehow I didn't imagine they also would slash current salaries.

Back to my former coworker. I told her that few seemed up for the move, and that the head of one afflicted department estimated a zero-percent acceptance rate. In this light, I said, this effectively was another round of layoffs. She agreed and urged me to grab all I could. I mentioned I'd been through a layoff myself, so my current level of trust in any employer to provide long-term job security was nil, so I had been doing just that since my start. I also let her know how my new coworkers on the book all were hired in Central City, which made my retention mystifying and tenuous. She smiled and reiterated her "grab all I could" advice, adding that eventually we'd be able to lodge the remaining Tri-State Area employees in someone's house. Considering this is probably how we started up, I said, at least it would be a return to our roots. She laughed, and we parted ways.

That evening, I spent several hours reading about financial management and freelancing.

Overdue Returns

FOR THE PAST TWO MONTHS or so, I've been culling my library. It's now obvious that books are missing from the shelves. If you were wise enough to have taken a picture of my living room during one of my Xmas parties here, holding that photo up with my current shelves in the background would display notable gaps.

This has not been easy. I was raised with a reverence for bound words. I've long had full shelves, plus a couple of boxes of additional books — roleplaying tomes, mostly — in the closet. Parting with them seemed heretical.

I've since understood the emotional attachment that old possessions can conceal, the ties to a safer past they can represent for some. Taken to an extreme of which I would accuse nobody I know, it results in hoarding. In my case, it belies a sad nostalgia. And I have come to hate that prison of a word.

Merciless winnowing was in order.

The first couple of loads went easily. I've brought three grocery bags to the library so far. I actually believe some of the books came to me from their monthly fundraising sales. I think I bought them — I'm thinking of four or so S. J. Perelman collections — out of a sense that I was rescuing the wit inside from final disappearance. I now know it is not my duty to rescue them at the cost of convenience, storage space, or sentimental ties to a New York society now long gone. I'm done with them; let someone else enjoy them. Their past is not my past. I've got enough trouble with that past already.

Poker books from earlier in my studies were also added to the mix. If I've internalized the wisdom, I don't need the shells from whence it sprung. Not that I've become some sort of hold'em demigod, but if I am playing better in any way as a result of having read them, they're sort of alive through my improved play. Which sounds like the justification those soccer-team plane-crash cannibals made for wolfing their dead chums in Alive. At no-limit hold'em, there's little distinction. Eat or be eaten.

But I digress. I made a rule earlier this year that if I were to buy new books, old books would have to go on a one-for-one exchange. I recently took the opportunity to upgrade my Las Vegas Fodor's Guide. My copy of James Ellroy's towering and ugly masterpiece American Tabloid seems to be out on permanent loan, and I fetishize that book; thus I also ordered that. Those were straight replacements (my 2006 Vegas Fodor's is now in the care of a recent convert to the Neon Havens). Were anything else to come in the door, however, something else would need to exit.

Inspired by a post on Get Rich Slowly about the acid-drip that renting a storage space can represent to one's savings, I felt energized to resume my book winnowing. This morning, my local library will become the lucky recipients of the following volumes:

Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy: Millions of these two titles are in print, and shall be for years. No need to duplicate the work of the public library system by retaining two of them here. I do have fond memories of Red Storm though. During my boring college summer job, I used to sneak the paving-stone-sized Red Storm paperback into the john for 20-minute reading breaks. Not as brazen as my mother's habit of taking naps in the ladies' room on days following benders with officemates, but damn close.

The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction: This one, a college textbook, has survived several purges. It was the sole text used in an American fiction class I took as part of the English major program. A second course I took that same semester — for which I had to read and comprehend a Great Novel like The Sound and the Fury or A Farewell to Arms each week — had the same professor. And he was terrifying. Think about one click less scary than Elaine Benes's dad as portrayed by Lawrence Tierney in Seinfeld. He wasn't hostile or lacking in academic rigor, just terse and uncompromising, and he detested lack of class participation. (As someone who is terrified of public speaking, but even more upset by having nobody else in a class or meeting answering an instructor's question, I thus had four phobia-laden classes per week.) People eventually forced themselves to answer his questions, but almost always with an unconscious inquisitive lilt at the end, as though asking the prof if they had finally satisfied his burning quest for an answer that demonstrated that the class was actually thinking deeply about the literature. In retrospect, it was effective. In person, it was enervating.

For the class in which we used the Norton, we had the choice for a final project of analyzing one of the short stories we hadn't covered in class, or writing a new one. I chose the latter, and submitted what I, with my current set of eyes, now recognize as a terrible pastiche of cyberpunk clichés. I also now realize they were only really clichés to someone who, as I had been in 1990, hadn't been steeping themselves in William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Walter Jon Williams, and Richard Kadrey at every chance. I anticipated a withering last-page summation of its crappiness from this strict arbiter of great American literature. I was instead stunned to receive an A–. Two years later, I entered the story into a contest run by the college literary magazine. It took third, won me a C-note, and was published in the magazine. Not bad for a story whose best line was, "His scream abruptly cut off as my fingers met in his forebrain."

Writer's Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing: I took the opportunity a month ago to read through this, to determine whether it held anything of continuing worth. It does not; in fact, it's shockingly dated, and was so in the late 80s, when I received it as a gift. You wouldn't think writing tips could go out of date, but the book is tied closely to the markets contemporary to the publication of its individual articles. (Likewise with a guide to writing science fiction short stories that went in an earlier purge.) There is no advice in here that I cannot also find from working writers' blogs, more current writers' guides or marketplace reports, or — frankly — by taking the advice of an oaf I know who told me, about 12 years ago, that I ought to spend 3 hours a day writing. It was his one non-oafish piece of wisdom, and shames me in my failure to follow it.

(Yes, I owned this book before I wrote that horrible cyberpunk story in college. No, I didn't call upon its advice. Writer's Digest is blameless for that horrid line you read a couple of grafs up.)

White Jazz, James Ellroy: This will surprise some folks I know. But it's simply not as good as its predecessor, L.A. Confidential (which is an order of magnitude more complex than the also-excellent movie it inspired), or Ellroy's next novel, the aforementioned American Tabloid. (Jazz does introduce a prototype of Pete Bondurant, one of Tabloid's three stars, which gives me one of those shared-universe kicks, like seeing the skull of an Alien warrior-bug among the Predator's trophies in Predator 2.) For me, the tighter, more telegraphic prose style he adopted after L.A. doesn't function as well in the first-person narrative he uses in Jazz. Third-person limited seems to work best with that style, as does his use of three rotating protagonists, each of whom illuminates traits of the other two through his observations and interactions. With only one narrator, White Jazz feels more like a transcript; with three, Ellroy's books become brutal, seductively shadowed sculptures.

Shock Value, John Waters: The year was 1999. I'd just quit my first real job, and I was attending a horror convention with one of my now-former coworkers, on whom I had a wicked, unspoken crush. We shared a love for the science fiction show Babylon 5, and several of its stars were set to appear at the con. Also on the guest list, along with the usual assortment of nostalgia-pimps and fraying fright-flick and geek-TV retreads, was sleazemeister John Waters. I spent most of the con waffling over how to tell my coworker — who was, if it can be believed, even more naïve about romance than I was — that I dug her as more than just a friend. As I'd driven her to the con, however, I didn't want to spook her and make her even more skittish. So instead I followed her through the exhibition halls, spending way too much money on signed photos of various B5 stars. We bought copies of Waters's book and queued up for his signature. I told the surprisingly normal-looking but stylish Waters my name, shook his hand after he signed the book, and told him I loved his work in The Simpsons, for which he graciously thanked me. If I could've mustered the balls to have been as honest and direct with my coworker about how I liked her as Waters was about his life, aesthetics, and films in this book, I could've spared myself a summer's worth of nervous frustration and second-guessing . . . and the eventual humiliation of being flatly told, when I finally spilled my guts to her, that (and I quote) "you know, I don't date," only to watch her begin dating a longtime friend of mine, her eventual husband, that fall.

Not Sure How Many More Bullets I Can Dodge

IF THINGS CONTINUE AT WORK the way they've been going since the turn of the year, I'll be the only person in the office. Or at least this one.

Around 2:00 today, two messages went out to the staff. If you received the first one, you were called to a meeting at 2:30; I and the others who got the second one had to meet in the same place as the first group at three.

From past experience, you wanted to be in the second group. Last time they did this, the two meetings were launched so that the first bunch would be told of their layoff, and be packed and out the door, while the second bunch was being informed of their former coworkers' collective fate. Still, the cryptically brief note bore no information on why we would be meeting, so we were left to wonder.

I happened to pass the conference room while the first group was in session. No read on the faces; not excited, but not overly glum. Maybe the full story hadn't yet unfolded.

But I got a taste of what might be the topic of discussion when I hit the kitchen. I noticed five stacks of apartment- and home-finding guides on the sideboard, of the type usually found near the entrance of our local supermarkets. I passed without scrutinizing them at first as I got a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. On the return pass, I decided to look at one, to see how rents were doing in northern New Jersey during the collapse of the homebuying market.

Only this wasn't a New Jersey apartment guide. It was a Central City apartment guide.

All five of the guides were for Central City homes or apartments.

My guess: Some or all of us were going to be told our jobs were moving to Central City.

Although past experience told me that the second group to meet with the bigwigs was the one who was going to be OK — or at least better off by comparison — I knew that they had finally hired the last staffer the needed for my publication, out in Central City, the previous week. We were now at full strength again . . . and in far less time than I thought they'd need. And I could see no reason why they would persist in paying a New Jersey salary for a nonmanagement person when they could just as easily make a push to have me move, possibly knowing — from my earlier inquiry about COBRA — that I had displayed no particular fear over joblessness. By this method, they could "dismiss" me by offering me a go-away check, assuming I'd choose that and joblessness over moving.

Which is correct. My family and friends are here. Even if I didn't have either group, I can't easily conceive of an amount that would induce me to pull up my roots. Not before retirement age.

My hunch proved right. As I headed back to my desk, the first meeting broke up. I followed a couple of stunned-looking folks to a growing cluster of coworkers, who confirmed that production of several publications was to be consolidated in the Central City office, and the staffs could either move or take severance.

Long story short, my job is staying here, much to my surprise. The second group was indeed made up of folks slated to remain here.

I got assurances from two authorities (both parties to the note I sent around after my return from the hospital) that my presence in the office was very much desired and appreciated. I told one of these parties it was good to hear that, considering my review was on her desk.

I can only imagine how many folks will go along with this. This is a de facto layoff. The company had to know the majority of the people would say no. We're not an office of friendless orphans waiting for the next Pony Express recruiting drive.

So over the coming two months, a couple dozen folks will have the twin joys of helping to purge their cubes and departmental records of unneeded paper, back issues, and other impedimentia ahead of the planned subdivision of the office, and then themselves be purged.

I feel . . . lucky?

Three "FUCK!"s A Gallon

HOW SAD IS IT THAT all of my recent financial windfalls get grouped, in my mental budget, in the "use this to pay for gasoline" category?

In appreciation of the work that we did getting the last published issue of the magazine out under heavy fire, my managing editor gave me and the artist a $50 money card. In principle, I could use it in Las Vegas, spend it on some decent vacation clothing, dedicate it toward a digital camera — anything.

In practice, my first thought was, "I can actually fill up my car's gas tank!" rather than taking $20 sips each week to spread the Pain across multiple visits.

Same thing today, when I lugged a milk bottle full of small change (the quarters are reserved for laundry) to the bank. The $56.25 this yielded? Sure, I could drop it in my emergency fund. I could consider it found money and go nuts at a fairly decent restaurant. I could add it to my poker bankroll ahead of the hold'em binge in Sin City. Or just split it down the middle for Mother's and Father's Day gifts come those two holidays.

Nope. The trek to the bank took me past my local "cheap" gas station. There, I will have the pleasure, at my next fill, of being keistered for $3.24 for each gallon I buy, which will top out at about six gallons for the usual double-sawbuck sip. I can only imagine the $56 will go into my tank in part or full. (The quarter I'm still saving for the damn wash.)

I feel like fuckin' Mad Max crossing post–nuclear holocaust Australia, searching wrecked vehicles along the dusty Outback highways for traces of the precious juice. Only this isn't a sunbeaten dead continent I'm inhabiting; this is the last remaining superpower . . . granted, a superpower with track marks up and down its arms from skin-popping Chinese money and Wah'habist oil, but still, more or less the scuffed hulk of what we used to consider the primus inter pares of the First World.

If I'd have known, pre-$3/gallon, that gas would continue to spike, I'd have bought a clutch of gas cans, filled them while gas was "cheap," then lined them up in my parents' garage. If airlines and delivery services can hedge against commodity speculators dry-humping the cost oil, so can I. Ideally, I'd make like an Eighties-style apocalypse cult and build my own massive underground tanks, but I think you need a few thousand follower-zombies to help fund such an endeavor. I'm lucky if I can get dogs to come near me. And they don't carry cash.