Centaurs don't require gas to operate, just the tasty dragon eggs of Zondor. Which is a whole other problem.

Well, it turns out that Las Vegans are just too cool to ride the bus — despite rising gas prices that are making Hummer drivers weep onto their tiny penises.

OK, so maybe our bus system isn’t ideal, a fairly unimaginative grid setup imposed on a postwar, suburban-styled, car-centric city, but Las Vegans who shun rubbing elbows and other body parts with public transportation’s great unwashed may have a change of heart later this year when … the SUPER-SPIKE arrives. That’s the coinage of one greenie oil analyst for Goldman Sachs who predicts a price surge this year that will take crude oil to $200 a barrel — why, that’s, like, half an Xbox 360! (However, you can’t play Rock Band on a barrel of oil.)

The refreshing thing is that the analyst, Arjun Murti, isn’t wringing his hands or clamoring to crack open Alaska or advocating bum-rushing Iran to steal its oily goodness. Rather, he sees a silver lining of such prices encouraging people to actually think about their energy consumption choices. Shocking! A snip from the IHT story:

But the grim calculus of Murti’s prediction, issued in March and reconfirmed two weeks ago, is enough to give any American pause: At $200 a barrel for oil, gasoline could cost more than $6 a gallon, or about $1.60 a liter, in the United States. U.S. pump prices are now around $4 a gallon.

That would be fine with Murti, who owns two hybrid cars.

“I’m actually fairly anti-oil,” said Murti, who grew up in New Jersey. “One of the biggest challenges our country faces is our addiction to oil.”

In short: See you at the bus stop this fall, wearing that vaguely constipated expression public transportation users don when peering down the road, wondering when the damn thing is finally gonna come …