You know, this self-isolation thing isn’t all bad. How many of you can handle boring dinner parties or the like? For those of us that would rather spend an evening unclogging toilets, we devise coping mechanisms. I cowardly avoid them. Larry David, famously prickly star of Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld fame, simply stands up as soon as he’s finished eating, and leaves. A friend of mine has a different tactic. He accepts the invitations, joins the conversations, and as soon as his interest [Read more]
Column: Oil market mayhem hard to analyze, even without Russia/Saudi antics
“I’m not a pessimist, I’m an optometrist.” Ricky, lovable imbecile and small-time felon from "Trailer Park Boys" (bless you Netflix) If there is anything funny at all about the COVID-19 experience, other than some very clever memes making the rounds, it’s the way that market commentators, the ones that “give meaning” to the day’s market activity, have been reduced to puddles of gibberish in trying to explain what’s going on. They try hard, oh lord they do try, but the standard reference [Read more]
Column: Maybe COVID-19 will help break some moronic but persistent infinite loops
In the annals of didactic cinematography, where the antics of wise and/or screwball characters amuse while tricking us into learning some sort of life lesson, all the highbrow Shakespearean puffery and Hollywood writing/casting skills take a back seat to the resonating human-condition life-lesson provided by Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. For those of you unfortunate enough to have lived through the show (on tiny fuzzy TV screens that a three-year-old would lose it if forced to watch), Ralph [Read more]
Brilliant Michael Moore documentary: Much needed environmental reality check comes from the unlikeliest place, and he’s dead right
On this evening’s entertainment schedule, the planned binge-watch of the rest of Season 3 of Trailer Park Boys is going to have to wait. I’ll have to find out tomorrow if Ricky and his 8-year-old daughter, following a particularly poignant episode, were able to quit smoking together by using the patch. Tonight I have to clear the deck for the new Michael Moore documentary, Planet of the Humans, available on YouTube (and is embedded below this post). It is going to be so brilliant I might [Read more]
Column: A proper national energy policy should be a post-coronavirus priority
When this is all over, the lockdown, what is the world going to look like? Some aspects of the reversion to the mean will be predictable – as soon as social distancing is no longer a health imperative, bars and restaurants across the country will explode like Stampede at its finest. Well, maybe not that extreme, there's only so much liquor available, but it will be some party. Travel will tentatively resume, and even those who “hate the mall” or “hate shopping” will no doubt feel pretty good [Read more]
Column: All eyes on Saudi-Russia-US poker game
How crazy is the world right now? You don’t need me to tell you, not after you’ve spent three weeks straight in your house watching the world as we know it grow distorted like funhouse mirrors as you look out your window. It’s actually even crazier than that if you’re in the hydrocarbon business. Despite producing the fuel that the world demands, in ever-harsher conditions, a certain subset of the population is actively trying to kill the industry by blockading anything it tries to build and [Read more]
Column: Watching the global supply-tech mega-system swarm a problem is a beautiful sight
In the official 1840 US government census, a soul-searching question was posed to the familial point of contact: How many idiots are there in your household? It's true. People didn't have time to mince words back then. Pity the poor father of twelve, looking down the dining table...not that one, not that one, yes for sure, that one's a maybe, hmm good with a pitchfork but just look at that skull, etc. You may have different yardsticks for charting how far humanity has progressed in the past [Read more]
Column: A farmer’s guide to wrestling COVID-19
Since we’re stuck working from home and/or trying not to watch the death counts, or heaven forbid are unemployed and wish we were working from home, here’s a little diversion, and nothing makes for a quality diversion like a bunch of old farming stories. And while tales of chickens and dirt and combines are inherently rewarding in and of themselves, they also bring a pertinent lesson about today’s dire situation. There is a fascinating aspect to rural life; it is oppressively quiet and [Read more]
Column: I hear there’s some bug going around…here’s what to do about it
One gets the feeling that we are going to be a very weird species in a few months after the pandemic is under control (and it will be). A trip to the store for some basic supplies or to a parking lot to buy black-market toilet paper creates a feeling that must have been what French Resistance fighters felt like in WWII. Popping one’s head out is to be placed in imminent danger. We shun other people and scurry to the other side of the street when more than one or two crowd our personal space [Read more]
Column: Epidemics, OPECs, three-way collars, and possibly light at the end of the tunnel
On a surreal day late last week, I stopped by the nearest supermarket at what I hoped was a quiet time. I wasn’t expecting serenity, but holy mackerel I wasn’t expecting such an anthill either. While many were shopping in a normal fashion, others were rattled and prepping. Toilet paper was of course long gone. A woman next aisle over piled what looked like about 30 pounds of bananas onto the belt. Another had about ten cans of olives. Panicked weirdos, I muttered to myself, as I hoisted twenty [Read more]
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