Can you feel peak oil yet?

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forgetabout all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and justget on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff andenjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies ofeveryday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars.Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring thelatest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teamsare criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stockmarket is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

       But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things areseriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at theentrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily lifemeet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six creditcards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spendinga quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week.There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all thesupermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declaredbankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all theirfurniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so manyticks these days?