green eggs and gas

the high price of gasoline sparked quite a conversation this morning on the local talk show "talk of the town." as if with most free-flowing chat shows, the conversation meanders these days to the price of gas.

people call in and tell where they saw this price or that price, what street or nearby town it's in. someone else will call in and detail why they went to the store, then put gas in the car and how much it cost. the host will then say, well, that was yesterday, today it might be higher.

and so the conversation goes back and forth, volleying here and volleying there.

but this morning, something different was thrown into the mix. this guy called in, presumably from the store doing the advertising, saying taht a grocery store that sells gas was selling it for $3.11. all a customer had to do was buy two dozen eggs and they'd get the deal.

ok, so here's a chance to get cheaper gas. i don't know how much the eggs cost, hopefully not so much that it wouldn't make a difference. then, you just had a crap load of eggs for awhile. bake a lot of cakes, i guess.

well, wouldn't you know it, callers started calling in about that. their main concern was the amount of eggs. i thought they'd start talking about what to do with all of those eggs.

no, friendly readers, the callers began talking about the longevity of eggs inthe fridge. this woman calls up and says they only last 10 days, so they'd have to eat them quickly. another one calls up and says they last longer, and by the way, some nice birds are sitting out in the yard.

another woman called up and said eggs last much longer because they used to haul them down state. the host of the show agreed with her. the next call had to do with barn swallows and how they showed up and then disappeared. that spurred up a small chat about some noisy birds being cowbirds.

in between the talk about the birds and the expiration of eggs, someone said a dozen egs isn't too bad. a couple of calls later, someone said, "it was two dozen, not one dozen eggs," and she hung up. insanity.

the conversation quickly devolved away from gasoline prices. it happens quite frequently. all it takes is one rogue caller to cause the chat to veer off into a black hole of chaos. focus people.

if you're going to make a comment on the egg/fuel thing, then talk about either what a good deal it is or not a good deal. gripe about what the hell you're going to do with that many eggs. but don't go off and start yakking seriously about expiration dates of eggs. it isn't quite relative to the subject at hand. figure that out for yourself. if that many eggs is too much for you, then give some away toa neighbor or family members. then, you did some charity, got gas at a cheaper price and helped out (hopefully) some poor egg farmer in the midwest.