Round up the kids and grab the keys to the Vanagon: It’s time for a summer road trip! Gas prices have dipped 4 percent recently — nearly 18 cents, plummeting to a rock bottom $3.80 per gallon. Somebody turn on the blue light special. They’re practically giving it away!

It’s sad when $3.80 per gallon is considered a “bargain.” Why, I’m old enough to remember April 2009 — a simpler time when Oprah still had a talk show, the Lakers could dribble a basketball, and gas was a measly $2.76 a gallon. Since then, households are spending an average of $168 more for gas, for a total of $369 per month.

Think of it, $369 for gas. Every month. Just to make your car leave the driveway. That’s not counting car payments, car insurance, car registration, car maintenance, car washes — all of which are getting more expensive as inflation continues to rise. Doesn’t that just drill a black sticky gash into your innermost soul, like a BP oilrig, slurping out your will to live?

Not to mention every 50-cent spike in the cost of gasoline drains another $70 billion annually from the US economy. Did you get a raise last year? No, of course not. Employment is hovering at 12 percent in California and most of us are lucky just to have jobs. In 2011, not getting fired is the new raise.

Couple that with steadily increasing fuel prices since 2005 (a penny here, a nickel there) and for the last few years we’ve all been taking pays cuts. Some estimates have gas jumping to $5 per gallon by August. That’s a whopping increase of $1.20 per gallon. Here’s betting you don’t receive a $1.20 per gallon raise from your boss by August, which means another cut to your budget. Or maybe we can all just start taking hot air balloons to work. How much does helium cost per gallon?

Asked by a magazine recently what he would like for his 50th birthday on August 4, President Obama said, “A much lower unemployment rate. And lower gas prices. Those would be perfect gifts.” Gee, if only there was some kind of powerful figurehead elected to run this country that could do something about unemployment and gas prices. Because I’d hate to see Obama’s birthday wish spoiled.

I’m not saying the president of the United States should be able to control gas prices and unemployment, but the president of the United States should be able to control gas prices and unemployment. He’s the most powerful man on the planet. What else has he been doing for 3 years? Our military seems to be invading countries all the time. Why not invade something I care about for once, like a Chevron or an Arco?

We have a country with a population of more than 300 million. You’re telling me between all of our scientists, inventors and captains of industry, not one person can come up with a solution for $3.80 per gallon? A solar-powered jetpack? A wind-aided hovercraft? C’mon people, work with me!

Apparently the problem is we’re not screaming loud enough.  We go about our daily lives like this is no big deal. Turn on the news and there are stories about non-gas related things. How am I supposed to care about the crappy Dodgers or some third-grader who wins a spelling bee when gas, which used to cost $1.65 a gallon, now costs more than double?

It’s the same gas, right? My car can’t fly or go back in time like Michael J. Fox’s DeLorean? My house is worth less. My 401k is worthless. But somehow gas has gone up 115 percent? You want to see the economy turn around, President Obama? Stop forcing your citizens to empty their wallets into an unleaded tank.

Every other problem we have is secondary to gas prices. Healthcare, social security, drugs, crime, obesity: All of them will be solved if you lower gas prices. Don’t believe me? If gas is affordable, I will be less likely to get high and mug an elderly fat person.

Lower gas prices and the whole world gets brighter. Bet your solar-powered jetpack on it.

Contact Jeff Girod at finalword@ieweekly.com 

Driving on the Riverside 91 is a trip through time and culture. In the last 3 weeks I have seen, count ‘em, TWO pissing Calvin stickers. Yesterday’s featured Calvin urinating on the word “VW.” An odd choice. But what made it doubly odd was that the sticker was attached to a Mazda pickup truck.

Now by no means am I a “car guy” or a truck elitist. I don’t get mixed up in the Chevy vs. Ford vs. Toyota debate. But I’m pretty sure in the pyramid of autos, Mazda finishes somewhere down near the bottom next to Yugo and a potato racer I made in Cub Scouts. Besides, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t prefer a VW to a Mazda: Better performance, resale value, safety standards, plus didn’t Mike D from the Beastie Boys used to rock a VW hood ornament around his neck during the 80s?

The Mazda/VW hate is an odd combination. That’s like an “east coast/west coast” rivalry between Harlem rappers and Bel Air orthodontists. And it raises so many questions: Just what happened in this Mazda driver’s life to make him hate VW’s? What “drove” — pardon the pun — him away from VW’s into the scotch guarded, cup-holdered affordable armrests of a Mazda? And really, was a pissing Calvin sticker the healthiest way to work through this poor soul’s obviously misguided VW aggression?

It was enough to give me pause as I smoothly accelerated my vastly superior turbo-charged V6 engine past his gutless little V4.

Food fight! This one’s in Chicago where an elementary school has banned homemade sack lunches, requiring every class clown, schoolyard bully and teacher’s pet to buy a nutritiously balanced lunch served by the cafeteria.

No sack lunches? How will tomorrow’s generation ever learn the importance of bartering? Without experiencing the thrill of trading a granola bar for a Chocodile — or a Ziploc bag of Cheez-Its for a Nutter Butter — we’re dooming millions of children to a lifetime of paying full-price at flea markets and strip mall mattress stores.

“Nutrition wise, it’s better for the children to eat at the school,” said Elsa Carmona, principal of Little Village Academy. “It’s milk versus a Coke.” Principal Carmona went on to say, “Sit up straight,” “No running in the hallway,” and “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” (Principal Carmona is a bit of a hard ass.)

I like tater tots as much as the next second grader… but is she really expecting students to eat fish sticks and sloppy joe’s every day? She’ll have an auditorium of 10-year-olds with claw hands from trying to open those tiny cardboard milks.

But hold the recess bell: Maybe Principal Carmona has a point. Turns out every lunch in her cafeteria must contain whole grains (which is way healthier than the half grains I’ve been snacking on). Her school’s meals also feature a different vegetable daily, plus only reduced-fat salad dressings. I’ve lost 5 pounds just imagining it.

Granted, Chicago’s mandatory lunch program costs $2.25 per day, but 86 percent of Chicago’s students qualify for free or reduced prices. And even if parents had to pay the $11.25 a week, that’s still a bargain. I pay $35 a month to send food to a starving child in India, and I doubt it’s served on a lime green tray by a 300-year-old in a hairnet.

As a rule, I’m a fan of any meal I don’t have to prepare. I can’t even peel an orange without lying down. I’m lucky if I eat one healthy thing a week and that was before I discovered cheese and beef jerky were trying to kill me.

I’ll be honest with you, because I think our friendship has blossomed during the last 350 words: You’re a fat disgusting pig. Now don’t get upset tubby, or your neck rolls will get all glisten-y. I’m a fat disgusting pig, too. We’re all disgusting pigs. It’s just a cruel fact that frosting tastes better than cauliflower. And the only way we’re going to eat healthier is if someone removes the snack cakes from our cold pudgy hands and takes away our ability to choose.

Children are no different. They may look round and adorable on the outside, but on the inside they have the aorta and lower intestine of a thigh-chafing, pastrami-loving plumber. One-third of America’s kids are overweight or obese, and since children consume at least 30 percent of their calories while in school, healthier school lunches make sense.

Our kids are lucky if they accidentally brush up against a head of lettuce, let alone five square meals a week. And some parents still want to pack their own kids’ lunches? Why, because there’s so much nutrition in a Capri Sun and fish crackers? The burden of parenting is hard enough. Be thankful that someone else is volunteering to literally step up to the plate.

Schools throughout the country are taking Principal Carmona’s low-sodium meatball and running with it. An Alabama school banned students from bringing drinks from home, serving ice water instead. New York schools outlawed cupcakes and other desserts. An Arizona school allows home-packed lunches — as long as nothing contains white flour, refined sugar, or other “processed” foods. And schools across the nation have booted chocolate milk and soda from their vending machines.

These sound like drastic measures, but these are drastic times. And I’m ready to endorse anything that preserves the health of our children. (And more importantly, cuts down on the amount of wheezing, sweaty ass crack I see at bus stops.

It’s too late for you and me. But thanks to visionaries such as Principal Carmona, some day someone might actually eat a radish.