America's Gas Problem

This isn't a post about farts (apologies if you're looking for fart jokes here, not today) or even gas really (apologies if you thought I was going to go off on how we need to use less gas).  It's a post about my frustration with the new gas containers.  I grew up in the 90s, during which time my dad taught me how to do basic things like mow the lawn.  He had a very simple gas container that is still in the shed at my mom's house.  For all I know, it could have been his father's gas container before it was his.  It is durable.  It has always worked properly.  It has never failed.  It is very simple to use, even for a child.

I bought my own house a few years ago, and naturally I needed to buy my own lawnmower and my own gas container.  The lawnmower thing was simple enough.  I have a small lawn, so it takes about 20 minutes to mow the entire thing with a push mower.  I found an inexpensive one with a Briggs and Stratton engine.  Easy enough.  But I couldn't seem to find the gas container I wanted, which is one like Dad had.  It has two holes in it.  One hole is where you uncapped it and poured the gas out of, and the other is the vent.  But every place I went had this terrible looking thing that looked like it could never possibly function properly.  I went to Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, the local Hardware Store (Goody's).  None of them had what I was looking for.  I didn't understand it.  Did this weird looking thing that I would have to actually read directions in order to use work that much better?

I finally asked a worker in one of the stores if they had what I was looking for.  They did not, nor could they or anyone else.  In the name of environmental protection, the Government/EPA had passed new laws and regulations regarding what could legally be sold as gas containers (dafuq?).  I wondered if one person somewhere had somehow misused the old container and destroyed something.  Nope.  Turns out, there were concerns about vapors escaping from the vent, air quality, spills, smog...  Look, I'm all for helping the environment, but I was skeptical that this new container could help anything at all.  But what choice did I have?  Unless a store broke the law or I came across one at a tag sale at some point, I had to buy this thing.  So I did.

I read the directions on how to use it.  It didn't work quite how it was supposed to.  It was even worse than the complete piece of plastic crap it appeared to be.  In fact, pretty much every fucking time I used it, I spilled gas.  It got on my hands, it got on my grass.  I know I'm not the only one either.  I guarantee you these things have made the environment much worse overall.  What the hell were wrong with the old ones that worked and were made far better?  The ones that didn't come with instructions because you didn't need them?  Who got paid off to turn something that has never been a real problem into something that turns simple tasks into a headache?  Everything smells like gas.  My grass smells like gas.  My hands smell like gas even after washing them for several minutes.  It's a good thing I don't smoke cigarettes.

So finally, somehow, this monstrosity of a contraption in my shed ended up getting to the point where one of the crappy plastic mechanisms must have gotten stuck, and this has caused it to actually work significantly better.  I've figured out how to avoid gas from dripping out of it, and since I'd probably end up breaking it if I tried to force the disassembly that's supposed to occur after each use, I just leave it as it is.  There's something disconcerting about there not being a vent where there should be one though.  I hope that if Donald Trump gets elected President, bringing back the old gas containers will be one of the ways in which he plans to make America great again.

NEVER Hillary

I don't particularly care for Donald Trump.  I really don't.  I wasn't a big fan of Ted Cruz either.  I think I actually started to like him less than Trump in the final days of his campaign.  John Boehner obviously likes Trump better than Cruz.  Of the final three Republicans, I endorsed John Kasich.  He grew on me over the course of his campaign, and he became the only voice of reason, but the American people decided against voting for reason this time around, and he was nowhere even remotely close to clinching the nomination, so he eventually had to drop out of the race as well.  That leaves Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee.  Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are still fighting it out for the Democratic nomination, but Hillary will more than likely be the nominee (assuming she's paid off enough of the necessary people to avoid an indictment).  Without any truly viable third party candidate at the moment, it looks like I may be casting my vote for The Donald.  Trump is not the Hitleresque Racist Misogynous Xenophobe that the media makes him out to be.  He's Donald Trump, not Donald Sterling. He's said some unfortunate things, no doubt, but he's not who he's pretending to be either.  This isn't the first time a candidate has pretended to be something that he's not (see John McCain 2008, ugh...).  In any case, Trump could be a not-so-good President, or he could be a good one.  Hillary on the other hand?  There is no doubt in my mind that she would be a TERRIBLE President.

A leader in the KKK endorsed Hillary a few months ago.  A lot of folks on the Left said that it was a sham designed to hurt her and aid Trump, a candidate who all White Supremacists must clearly support (wait, didn't his daughter convert to Judiasm when she married a Jewish guy?  I thought the KKK was anti-Semitic...).  I'm not so sure that this was a sham after all.  Yes, a former House Representative, David Duke, who was involved in the KKK decades ago, is apparently supporting Trump.  And that was big news why?  Why does Hillary get a pass on support from someone currently in the KKK?  What was Hillary Clinton doing in 1964?  Supporting racist Barry Goldwater for President (apparently she only supports Republicans when they are against civil rights for Black people?).  Oh, and she's really tight with and supportive of former Klan member Senator Robert Byrd.  But it's cool because he's a Democrat.  David Duke is a Republican, so it's not cool.  It's not like it's the Democratic party that was pro-Slavery and has held countless positions detrimental to non-White folks over the course of many decades.  Oh, wait, it is!  Just look at all the cities that have had Democrats in control, uninterrupted, for many decades if you need modern day evidence.  It's sickening.  But that's just the tip of the iceberg that is Hillary Clinton's body of work.  I will never vote for Hillary Clinton for President.

Why not?

Benghazi, lying, lost money, more lying, illegally obtained money, even more lying, defending a child rapist, discounting her husband's accusers, big donors, absurd payments for speaking engagements, disrespect for people who serve, telling a secret service agent to fuck off when he said good morning to her, supporting murder in the form of abortions, not supporting the second amendment, so many lies, oh yeah... the personal e-mail account with classified information on a private server thing too, and didn't she have to give back the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff she stole from the White House when her family moved out, she wants to get rid of the coal mining jobs, millions of other jobs will go out the window too if she tries to raise the National minimum wage to $15 per hour, may as well get rid of guards on the borders altogether if she gets into office, she wants to make the government bigger and more powerful, taxes will skyrocket, is she that forgetful or just a terrible liar, maybe she's senile, her views change based on convenience, I'm getting tired of making this list so I'll stop with saying that perhaps worst of all are the devastating choices she would make for Supreme Court Justices...

Never Hillary.

Never.