The Petrol-Pocalypse(tm) has left the vast majority of petrol stations completely out of fuel thanks to the Russian criminal gang DarkSide taking down the Colonial Pipeline with ransomware that got behind their firewall and royally buggered their operations.
The Colonial and Dixie Pipelines are the ones that supply the vast majority of petrol, diesel, and aviation kerosene from Houston TX to New Jersey and all points in between with the Colonial accounting for 45% of the fuel transport for the East Coast.
Of course, the rational approach to this “crisis” would have been to:
- Take a look at your fuel and comprehend what it is telling you.
- If the amount of petrol is greater than 1/4 of the tank capacity, you’ve got more than enough to make it to the weekend when the Colonial should mostly be restarted and the fuel is flowing. Keep your heiney out of the bloody petrol station…you don’t *NEED* to top-off and make it worse for everyone else! And filling up every bloody Jerry can you own on top of it is *RIGHT OUT*!
- If you’ve got 1/4 of a tank or less, fill up and then see rules #1 and #2 and let things settle down over the weekend.
It makes you wonder if anyone remembers the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when there’s the run on the bank and the Bailey Building and Loan and George is desperately pleading with his customers to take only the cash they need to ride out the immediate crisis so that *EVERYONE* in the community can survive?!?
Naturally, people round here decided to completely lose their damned minds and Raleigh devolved from a modern metropolis with a decently civilised society into the world of Mad Max trying to defend the last petrol refinery in the post-apocalyptic Australian bush!
As Katie and I (and of course the most important passenger Mistletoe!) were driving round at lunch to find any petrol as I was well under 1/4 of a tank, the surface streets were clogged with cars in queues waiting to get into the petrol stations. Miraculously, there weren’t a bunch of accidents as I had a couple of people change lanes in front of me to avoid the overflow and darned near take us out in the process.
So we get to the 76 on Poole Road and as we’re pumping, a woman halfway across the petrol islands starts screaming her fool head off. As near as we could decipher from her mostly incoherent shrieks, someone had pulled into the island in front of her nose-to-nose and the person behind her was right on her six preventing her from leaving the pumps.
I was honestly wondering if the fight was going to break out or someone was going to start shooting. With all of the shootings over the weekend, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest.
As it turns out, there was an altercation at the Marathon in Knightdale where a woman tried to jump the queue and when she was thwarted by other drivers, she rams one vehicle and then proceeds to get out and *SPIT* at the other driver. That male gets out of his car and returns the favour with a huge and disgusting loogie and then the fight is on like Donkey Kong. She gets a simple assault charge, he gets assault on a female and destruction of private property (her cell phone that he tosses).
OK, there’s a couple of problems right there.
Whilst you can certainly argue the guy getting spat upon would have been better served just ringing up the rozzers and having her take the ride in the buffalo cab solo…I can’t imagine that many people having epic patience like that in real life. In fact, the one that comes to mind is my Grandpa Williams as I only ever saw him get angry once in all the years I knew him. And even that flash of anger was fleeting (had I not been looking at him, I wouldn’t have seen it) and he was all “don’t you worry about it” in the next moment.
But the guy ends up with a more serious charge even though *SHE* is the one who clearly rammed his car in the video and she’s also the one who initiated combat. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not advocating it be open season on women at the hands of men but if the woman is going to go out of her way to assault someone with her bodily fluids (during a pandemic with a contagious virus no less!) and frankly win the fight on points, your opponent shouldn’t be nailed with a more serious crime simply because you’re a female!
Whilst we’re on the subject of injustice, what happened to the charge for her ramming his vehicle? Last time I checked, that was assault with a deadly weapon with intent to severely injure or kill.
Welcome to Thunderdome! Two men enter, one man leaves! And anything goes…
Those charge sheets seriously need amending with more coming her way.
Has that truly become how far we’ve fallen below the standard of decent behaviour?
I suspect they’ll both cop pleas to lesser offences and maybe get a bit of probation out of it. But the shocking thing is that we’ve not had more news stories just like it…people have just lost their flippin’ minds and for no real reason at all other than I guess stress of the pandemic is finally pushing them over the edge when another stressor comes along.
But there are the occasional moments of levity in the most unexpected of places such as this CNN story showing they are in desperate need of competent editors. Don’t worry, it’ll come to you… 😉
