It's a good bet gasoline in Chicago won't be cheap this summer. The only question is whether Chicagoans will again face the highest prices in the nation....And then he goes on to say why Chicago is such a rasty gas market.
UPDATE: It just occurred to me that "rasty" is probably a regionalism (that neither my Oxford American Dictionary, Heald Colleges Edition, nor The Penguin English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, has it listed is a pretty good clue, I think.). I suspect it originated as a combination of "rotten" and "nasty", with perhaps a dose of "rascal" thrown in. Its various meanings are something along the lines of rotten, nasty, difficult, exasperating, offensive, mean, ill-tempered, bad. It is perhaps most commonly used to describe a curmudgeon of sorts: as in he sure is a rasty old cuss, isn't he?
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