Boaty McBoatless and other grievances

 Woke up this morning to find America suffering from the ultimate first-world white people problem:  There's a boat shortage.  Specifically a yacht shortage, for that is how the insurance industry classifies even the smallest pleasure craft.  Don't ask me how I know this.  Damn, we're short on yachts.  It makes all our other troubles seem so far away.  

Like the gas shortage.  There is no gas shortage.  The petroleum industry bounced back admirably from the Colonial Pipeline being taken hostage, and from Texas refineries having to close in February when Greg Abbott-land had an electricity shortage.  What has the media scaring people ahead of the July 4th weekend is a driver shortage.   Lots of fuel truck drivers were laid off or retired during the pandemic lockdown and nobody wants to do the job without a hefty raise in salary, like millions of other workers in the service industries.  Thanks, Obama Biden.  It's your fault drivers and their families will live a little better.

The whole world is crying out for computer chips, it says here, no Bond-villain conspiracy, just surging demand from people who put semiconductors in everything from phones to cars.   American car production is booming and would boom louder if they could get the chips.  You can't have a car that isn't full of computers, which is why shade-tree mechanics of the future will need four years at MIT.  You can't have a phone that doesn't have the capacity to crash a satellite or store the complete works of Stephen King.   Chips make that happen.

Of course, some parts of the first world are suffering with shortages of their own making.  Yes, United Kingdom, you know what I mean.  Today in the Guardian Zoe Williams offers a humorous look at the problems she has faced in obtaining things like a rabbit hutch and an ugly sweater.  Grocery items are also disappearing mysteriously.  I had to look some of them up (langoustine = Norwegian lobster; Calpol = liquid aspirin for children; Um Bongo = racial slur involving anal sex, also a fruit juice).  One word:  Brexit.  I can't understand it, all of Johnson's other promises were spot-on, weren't they?  Well, you Brexit, you bought it, if you can find it in Tesco's.  The sad part is that the British, for centuries the butt of jokes about lousy food ("We had an empire to run!" -- John Cleese), were finally beginning to revel in the flavors of the world and even to invent a few, like chicken tikka masala.  Now it's back to brown Windsor soup and mushy peas.  Freedom!