This week's column:Now and then there's a fuel such as I

With all the suffering going on in the world, it seems kind of petty to complain about something like gas prices. Fortunately, that's never stopped most of us before -- if we didn't complain about petty things we'd spend most of our time staring at each other, cursing the awkward silence.

Still, I'm determined to find a silver lining to the cost of fuel. For instance, take my 1998 two-door Chevy Cavalier, which seemed small when I just had a dog but with an entire family feels almost comically diminutive, like a clown car. These days, though, people look at me in it like I was some sort of prescient genius -- a single guy could actually use this car to pick up women now.

However, even with a small car the gas prices have seemed onerous. This could have something to do with my until-recent tendency to buy gas $5 at a time, which today would get me approximately as far as the next pump.

To read the rest of this week's AT LARGE by Peter Chianca, click here.