Friday, May 02, 2008

Default Friday space-filler: Pluggers tries and fails at topical joke


Hey kids, is it just me, or does this not make any sense? First of all, you're not really SUPPOSED to top of your tank, because it puts you at higher risk for spills. Which are dangerous. And annoying if you work at a gas station. I was glad I never had to clean up any spills when I was pulling opening or closing shifts at the Safeway gas station. Having to explain how to use the pump OVER AND OVER to old people so they could use their Safeway cards to get $.03 off a gallon was bad enough without having to remember all those safety protocols for cleanups. Although one time I did catch a woman pumping gas into her giant SUV with the engine running and I overcame my natural aversion to speaking to customers because I didn't fancy being blown up, and walked up to her and demanded to know what she was doing. And this was not some clueless 16 year-old. This was like a 30 year-old woman with some kids who I'm pretty sure was capable of reading the NO SMOKING/TURN OFF YOUR ENGINE signs posted all over everything everywhere at every gas station.

But anyway, pluggers. The syntax is a little off, but I think I may have finally parsed what it means. Does this joke mean that the gas at the "bottom" of the tank was really cheap? Are they trying to imply that they haven't filled the tank since the 1950s? Is that even possible? How is this car even still running? It has 50 year-old gas burning* in its engine! I know pluggers are cheap, but seriously, WTF? Has it just been sitting in a barn for the last several decades? Is this an undead zombie plugger that has come back from the grave to retrieve his crappy old car, only to find that gas costs ten times more than when he was human? And now he's going to complain about it. God, even zombie pluggers are downers. I bet they only feast on the cheapest and most unappealing human flesh. Plugger zombies wouldn't be caught DEAD eating any of those east-coast elite latte-drinking brains. Nosirree. Pluggers prefer to suffer. It gives their lives meaning. They wouldn't know what to talk about if they weren't either bitching about how shitty life is or bragging about how cheap they are. Goddamn pluggers.


*Or whatever it is gas does in a car.

4 comments:

  1. I have never seen a gas tank located on the rear-center of the car. Is it behind the plugger's license plate or something? Is he just pumping gas into his trunk?

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  2. 1) yes. It is behind the license plate. So that you don't have to remember which side your tank is on.

    2) gas is purchased at a certain price. When you fill up your gas tank, it mixes with the old gas, obviously, but for the purposes of this explanation, assume that it doesn't (chemistry be damned!). Also, assume that your gas tank drains from the top (physics be damned!) Let's say you have a 10-gallon tank, and you bought your first tank (assuming, of course, that your tank was empty at that first fill-up) at $1/gallon. And let's say you fill it up every single time you're at the 1-gallon mark. So, now that gas is $3.50, you have 9 gallons which you bought at $3.50 and you'd still have that one gallon that you bought at $1. Pretty much, you have $32.50 in gas (9x3.5+1=32.5). Accountants can use this idea to inflate profits a bit by claiming that they were selling the reserves, which were purchased at a lower price. It's called "draining the pool" or some shit like that, and it's true.

    3) understanding this comic does not make it any funnier.

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  3. 1) I've seen other old cars with the gas tank hidden behind the license plate. I think this plugger is using it to confuse other cheap-ass pluggers who would otherwise siphon gas out of each other's crappy old jalopies at the drop of a hat.

    2) It is useful to know someone who was a math major.

    3) No, no it doesn't.

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  4. Does anyone else find this comic vaguely sexual?

    Maybe I'm just trying too hard...

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