PumpTV and responsible sourcing

I am a creature of habit and 90% of the time I fuel up my vehicle at the same place. I use the same discount card and the same credit card each time. Awhile back, I was returning from Savannah and stopped for gas at a place I had never been before.

I did the usual thing with the credit card and, lo and behold, the video screen on the pump sprang to life with what appeared to be the world’s worst-produced news broadcast.

A man was telling me about a ‘biofuel refinery’ in Idaho where they are making gas from corn. It was big news from the sound of things and I thought, “Hell, Wallace Pryor was doing that back home at his ‘gasahol’ plant 30-40 years ago”.

I certainly wasn’t up-to-date on gas pump broadcast technology but they were a little slow on the pickup on the whole corn to fuel technology, too.

Every time I have been to such a pump since, the screen spewed only absolute rubbish. So, I was shocked last week when I saw a man so engrossed in PumpTV that precious $4 a gallon gas was puddling on the concrete beneath his vehicle. He was oblivious, eyes glued to the screen.

I shouted twice before he awakened and let loose with a stream of expletives that would have made my ship-building, high iron-walking granddaddy blush. I couldn’t help but laugh and he started laughing, too.

The next visit to this same pump provided me with a lecture on making sure my diamonds, rubies, sapphires and other jewels are responsibly sourced before I buy them. This message is being repeated more and more now as they try to drum the propaganda into our brains.

Our eggs should come only from hens kept in a cage-free environment. When the hen’s egg production dwindles and she becomes a ‘fryer’ it is important that she have been given free range of the farm before being beheaded, eviscerated, etc.

This message is common in ads for beef, pork and dairy products and is slowly creeping into fast food ads as well. Apparently, snowflakes who have to run to their safe spaces when they see a photo of a house fire, need soothing before they chomp down on dead flesh.

Chickens are caught in houses using machines. They are crammed into coops and transported to the processing plant. They are hung up by their feet and their heads dragged through a pan of water with an electric charge on it. This relaxes the muscles so the head in hanging low enough for the blade that cuts off their heads and speeds up the circulation so the birds bleed out more quickly.

Cows and pigs, regardless of their sources, eventually arrive at the slaughterhouse. They hang out in the corral with their fellow porkers and bovines until they are ushered through the door and a man with an air gun drives a steel bolt through their brains. Read Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country for Old Men’ or watch the excellent film adaptation of it for more on how this device works.

Snowflakes beware. It is not for the squeamish.