June 12, 2008
Berkeley, California
This gas thing is getting ridiculous, and I decided I wasn't going to sit idly by while the big oil companies and George Bush sucked every last cent out of my welfare checks. I called my friend and assistant, Scooter, over to discuss a plan to strike a blow against Big Oil. Scooter showed up with a bag of mushrooms and two bottles of Bailey's for what promised to be a marathon strategy session.
In order to come up with an action plan (AP), we first needed to determine what our end objective (EO) was to be. Scooter and I were in agreement that we needed to somehow get the gasoline (G) to the consumers (C) in a way that would deprive the oil companies (OC) of their obscene profits (OP). The only way to do this was to somehow get the G before it went to the stations (S). We concentrated on how we might divert transport tankers (TT) to our clandestine "People's Station" (PS), or as Scooter wanted to call it, "Freedom Station" (FS) where protesters could fill up for free. Finally after the most mentally exhaustive thirty-five minutes of my life, we had our EO and AP to get the G TT to the C's PS (or FS) thus depriving the OC of their OP. Scooter then threw up all over my new couch. Nice.
Wednesday morning Pepe's nephew Hector liberated a tanker truck from a 7-11 when its driver got out to fill the station's tanks. Hector then drove the three blocks to Pepe's house where the most brilliant part of our plan took place - we emptied the fuel into Pepe's empty swimming pool! Scooter and I had correctly identified a residential swimming pool as the perfect storage container, as it could hold thousands of gallons of fuel, look perfectly normal from the air, and (this is the really brilliant part) we could pump the gas into cars through a long hose just by backwashing the pool! Genius? No doubt. Hector ditched the truck in Oakland and got himself a Slurpie.
Out front of the house, cars were lining up in response to our post for free gas I'd placed on the "Anarchist Today" website. Scooter, dressed like an old-time gas station attendant (nice touch), manned the backwash hose while Pepe in the backyard stood by the switch at the pool pump, waiting for Scooter's command. I wielded the camcorder to document this dramatic event. Scooter placed the vinyl hose to the filler neck of the first car and shouted to Pepe, "Fillerup!" The People's Station was open for business! After some gurgling, the vinyl hose swelled and the gas slowly began to flow. It worked beautifully! Scooter turned and gave the thumbs-up sign to the camera.
Approximately one second later a burst of gasoline erupted from the hose with such velocity that the blowback not only immediately blinded the now-screaming Scooter, but also caused him to drop the hose - yikes! On film the dancing blue vinyl hose looked like a giant Water Wiggle (TM), only the water was 86 octane Chevron with Techron, and the people being sprayed weren't frolicking, but hysterically running for their lives! Fortunately Pepe quickly hit the switch when the first torrents of fuel rained down on him in the backyard.
The fire investigator later determined that it was probably a spark in the switch that ignited the shower of fuel and incredibly strong fumes given off by a large swimming pool full of gasoline. Outside of Pepe losing all his exposed body hair in the initial explosion, thankfully nobody was seriously injured. The good news was that even though five houses, two storage sheds, twenty-two cars, and one swimming pool were completely destroyed, investigators couldn't prove exactly how much gasoline had been in the pool, and ended up issuing Pepe a ticket for "improper storage of a flammable liquid."
While some of the people who lost everything might possibly disagree, I was satisfied that we had successfully struck a powerful blow for the common man, and sent the big oil companies a message that we will not be trifled with.
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