Three things that will never change.

I've been lifting weights at various gyms for over 25 years, and during that time I've noticed that one thing never changes - the propensity for people to leave things wherever they please. In spite of (or maybe because of) signs that say "Replace weights when through" or something to that effect, I find that I routinely have to remove hundreds of pounds of plates from bars almost every day. Today was another such occasion.

Not only was there 135 pounds left unattended, but another 150 on a bar left on the floor, presumably for someone to trip over. To no one in particular I said, "People leave their crap all over. These are the same people who will yell at their kids for leaving their toys on the floor at Christmas!" Knowing I was right, I proceeded to roll the offending bar out of the way and take down the 150 pounds from the bar I wanted to use.

There is a faction of the population that believes that they can leave their junk lying wherever they want because, in their view, "Someone will clean it up." [me] These are the people who throw trash out of their car windows and leave popcorn containers at the movie theater.

Today, while watching television (which I was doing because the wind was blowing 30 miles per hour and I had already done my heavy lifting) a Subway ad came on touting their new Flatbread Sandwich. It looked good (because it was on TV) and the announcer told me how good it was. Then, he told me that it was "available for a limited time." Why? If it's so good, why wouldn't Subway want to sell it permanently? Once they got us hooked on it, the next time a customer came in and wanted one and the "sandwich artist" told him that the sandwich was no longer available, would that create a good or bad relationship between Subway and its customers? Anyone? If it's a good sandwich, keep selling it. Don't tease us with it and then take it away. That's how my marriage ended.

60 Minutes did a story on the Saudi Arabian oil producers. They sent Lesley Stahl to talk to Ali Al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister and de facto head of the OPEC oil cartel, because she's a girl and even the Saudi's wouldn't beat up a girl. One thing that came out of the story was that it costs those bastards "less than two dollars" to produce a barrel of oil. The other thing that came out of it was that there is more oil in the Khurais field than in the entire United States. It's the largest oil facility to come online anywhere in the world in nearly three decades with, the Saudis say, 27 billion barrels of oil. They also aren't scared of hydrogen, solar, wind or other so-called alternative fuels because they are developing their own green (that word again) and that Saudi Arabia is doing research on solar power because, no place on Earth is sunshine more abundant than in Saudi Arabia.

"But listen to what the professionals say and what do they advise: it’s not going to happen today. It’s not going to happen ten years from now. It’s probably not going to happen 20 years from now. It’s not going to happen 30 years from now, okay?" Because you are still going to be using fossil fuels," Al-Naimi predicted. He told Stahl the kingdom is doing research on solar energy, as sunshine is more than abundant in Saudi Arabia. And he says it won't hurt their oil industry, but supplement it. "Our vision is that we will be exporters of gigawatts of electricity. We will be exporting both: barrels of oil and gigawatts of power."

So - let's review. We're hopelessly addicted to oil. Most of the world's oil is in the Middle East, the most volatile area in the world. The country that controls the oil is doing everything it can to keep us on the oil standard and failing that, they will develop an alternative that they also control.

Al-Naimi says the U.S. is Saudi Arabia's number one customer. And the question is: what will Aramco do to keep it that way? One thing is discourage the move toward electric cars by trying to alleviate our concerns about the environment. They showed 60 Minutes their new $4 million experimental combustion engine they hope will increase gas mileage while it lowers CO-2 emissions.

We're screwed.