Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Let's All Drive Down To The BP Protest




An appalling oil spill is underway in the Gulf of Mexico. You've probably heard. BP has taken ownership of the problem in the sense of agreeing that it is their installation that exploded, after the failure of an early attempt to alter their logo with sharpies and pin it on Brown & Root. There has been some effort to scatter blame among various widget manufacturers, but no one other than Rush Limbaugh has claimed this was anything but a massive screwup. Mr. Limbaugh suggested it was an act of sabotage on the part of environmental extremists, but this is widely held as absurd, inasmuch as they're all busy shooting polar bears and stitching them together to reflect more sunlight and cool the climate.

The Obama administration, for its part, has stepped up its scolding efforts. It's just like in the Fox show "24," when the computer geniuses are tapping madly at their keyboards for information that will be needed in the next ten seconds or a nuclear bomb will go off, and the CTU director, who is under the impression they're all updating their Facebook pages, interrupts them to say that they must work quickly, because millions of lives are at stake. There is much helpful frowning and then everyone's right back at it.

So far, BP has attempted to rectify the problem by stuffing the rupture with golf balls, so things seem to be well in hand. Also, people have been collecting hair and fur to sop up the oil on the beach. Pet groomers and barbers have sent off sacks of it. Given that hair is remarkably absorbent, it would seem to be even more efficient to scrub the beaches with intact mammals, which is why I'm suggesting that a squadron of Labrador retrievers that are already inclined to roll in something smelly be dispatched right away. When they're done rolling, they can go jump up on Rush Limbaugh. Two birds, and all that.

Once Mr. Limbaugh calmed down about the sabotage aspect, he suggested that the ocean will eventually take care of the problem, which is true, if we use the same sort of time frame in which the sun will take care of us in a few billion years. Currently, of course, the ocean is taking care of the oil spill the way Mr. Limbaugh's trousers are taking care of his fat ass.

The temptation, since mammals and balls seem to be the key to solving this wicked problem, is to propose that we try baling up BP executives and troll them in the Gulf to test them for absorbency. This would be emotionally satisfying, but it ignores our own complicity in this mess. Ever since we began sucking the cream out of Planet Twinkie, we have enjoyed how zippy it makes us. Not individually, of course, where we tend more towards torpor, but as a group. We are caught up in a lifestyle that we like to believe makes us happy, and are willing to stick our heads in the sand, ignoring the tarballs, about our immense destructiveness. But the fact remains that we as a species have irreparably changed our environment. Not even beavers come close. Beavers do dam up miles of streams and change them to a succession of ponds and canals. This creates a new niche in the ecosystem, and some things are destroyed, while other things move in to take advantage of the new scenery. Mr. Limbaugh, taking the long view, contends that a similar thing will happen when we've finished bollixing up everything. Eventually everything will settle out according to God's plan and his chosen people will prosper. I'm sure it's true.

It's what they've been preaching in the cockroach churches all along.

32 comments:

  1. BP is the worst. Besides this lovely little grease spot spreading on the water there have been at least two explosions at their plant in Texas City in the last five years, safety always being at the bottom of their priority list with profit way up there at the top.

    And everything out of Limbaugh's mouth is absurd. I say we try to plug the hole with his fat ass. And why the hell hasn't he moved to Costa rica already?

    Oh the planet will survive but not til it kicks our species off the face of it.

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  2. To paraphrase my hero, Ian Malcolm, we are not destroying the earth, just making it inhabitable by humans. So Rush should be just fine with the rest of the lower life forms.

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  3. Good idea to use BP execs to soak up the oil, if we use really hairy ones it would work better.
    How fat do you think the CEO would shave his head?

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  4. My dad always says that if you want to promote the expansion of solar power, use up as much oil as you can. Maybe BP has finally nailed solar power so they're trying to "dry-up" the oil market.

    As you can see, I'm still trying to learn to laugh at this disaster. Maybe if I had a TV and had to listen/watch the commentary ad nauseum I'd get over it faster...

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  5. The fact that millions of people listen to Rush Li.... (can't bring myself to intone the name) brings me *this* close to giving up hope for humanity... or at least for America. I take the long view, however, and realize anyone that unhealthy can't last that long (can he?).

    Maybe the beavers could help, somehow.

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  6. People will buy what they can afford. All the preaching about conservation and the environment didn't do as much in 30 years as gas prices rising over 4 dollars a gallon did in 6 months. Make gas expensive and people will militate for other options. Politicians need to stop pandering to our pocketbooks and selling out our children.

    Plastic? Should be mind-numbingly expensive (but subsidized for medical uses). Disposable diapers? Make them costly and even this mother of 6 would have found her inner granola-crunchiness and started hanging out those cloth diapers on the line. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

    Money talks. Make people listen.

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  7. SC: Thanks for singing every note of my tune, on pitch. This whole business makes me crawly inside. It's hard to make it funny.

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  8. It burns me up - all these environmentally-damaging products are artificially cheap, because they don't take into account disposal costs, etc. Of course people are going to use them if they can afford them. Contrary to what President Obama has said, Americans usually do choose the easy over the necessary (and if you don't know what that is about, you need to go to The Daily Show and search on Baconnaise). We're only human.

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  9. You had me at the title, Murre. I knew it would be a really good one. Fierce and angry and funny at the same time.

    I kept waiting for you to suggest that we plug the well with nutrias.

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  10. JZ: or SPERM PLUGS! Now, where are we going to find enough...hmm.

    Thanks, Barb! Gol!

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  11. Priceless...absoulutely priceless.

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  12. It is hard to make this funny, but you have a gift for satire and that's often a powerful weapon. I'd would love to see the BP execs publicly strung up by their balls, along with everyone from the Bush administration who gutted the regulations and oversight which allowed this to happen. But then, we as a society who won't give up our gas guzzlers and keep demanding cheap fuel are just as much to blame. We have really fucked ourselves this time.

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  13. Brilliant once again! Being a visual person the words you put together create some very hilarious images - true word-art! Great job for getting your point across regarding a terrible catastrophe with creativity and humor. I haven't been able to find a cockroach church in my zip yet but I am still searching.

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  14. Whoa, Jim, "zip" must mean something different from what I'm thinking.

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  15. Sigh. I'd love to slap a big fat tax on petroleum.

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  16. You could call it a fat-ass tax, come to that.

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  17. I see someone already suggested plugging the well with Limbaugh's fat ass. What cracks me up are all these polls that have been out about how much people distrust (or hate) their government... now these same morons are screaming for the government to come and fix this - and while they're at it, reimburse them for all the money they won't be making fishing and shrimping in the gulf. Typical!

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  18. Couldn't agree more. Can we chuck RL in the oil spill instead?

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  19. About fifteen years ago a friend of mine, a former Assistant Secretary of the Interior (who shall remain nameless), said something that I've thought back to many times.

    He said that every geologic period has had its catastrophes, asteroids and so on, and that the human race is simply the current edition.

    Ya know what? He was right.

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  20. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  21. This post reads well in an English accent. The use of "bollix" is obvious, but the phrase, "Two birds, and all that," tastes just like British satire. I love it. Did you do this for BP, just so they would understand it?

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  22. Yeah, let's protest an oil company by driving cars. How stupid.

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  23. I used to live on the Gulf coast of Florida, and this spill/gush makes me so sad. And it's all because our government is always for sale. Someone once told me that some problems have no solution, and I fear that this might be the case with this leak. I hope I'm wrong.

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  24. Don't mind me, I'm just an idiot, but couldn't the well be plugged the same way we plug our noses when we go underwater..

    Not crimping the pipe, but blowing just enough air into the pipe to keep the oil from coming out--just like you do when you dive--you blow out just enough to keep the water from going up your nose. Of course, that would mean we could never use that pipe again--

    or perhaps constructing another pipe nearby, connected to the original pipe, sort of like the way that firemen get kids out of wells.

    I don't know, seems like there ought to be an answer (and a quick one). I cry every night for the animals that are dying on the beaches. What I'd give for somebody to fly me down there to help with the animal cleanup. I'd go in a heartbeat!

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  25. Well written Murr! Too bad we couldn't get that beaver to do a little chisle work on Limbaugh's face, but then I wouldn't want the poor creature to be poisoned in the process! Hearing BP oil exec's spout their "good will" makes me sick. Every time one of their propaganda ads plays on TV I just want to puke. I'd rather they just shut up! Instead, they should go down to the gulf and spend at least one day cleaning up oiled birds. Yesterday I heard another BP CEO deny that there is even an oil plume 6 miles wide under the ocean surface despite evidence from NOAA scientists. Oh, and he also insisted that BP has paid over half the claims people have submitted and that they were having a hard time getting people to even submit claims! Does he really think we are all just going to drink the Kool-aid with him? Not this time Jim Jones (BP)!

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  26. The fact that millions of people listen to Rush Li.... (can't bring myself to intone the name) brings me *this* close to giving up hope for humanity... or at least for America. I take the long view, however, and realize anyone that unhealthy can't last that long (can he?).

    Maybe the beavers could help, somehow.

    ReplyDelete
  27. JZ: or SPERM PLUGS! Now, where are we going to find enough...hmm.

    Thanks, Barb! Gol!

    ReplyDelete
  28. People will buy what they can afford. All the preaching about conservation and the environment didn't do as much in 30 years as gas prices rising over 4 dollars a gallon did in 6 months. Make gas expensive and people will militate for other options. Politicians need to stop pandering to our pocketbooks and selling out our children.

    Plastic? Should be mind-numbingly expensive (but subsidized for medical uses). Disposable diapers? Make them costly and even this mother of 6 would have found her inner granola-crunchiness and started hanging out those cloth diapers on the line. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

    Money talks. Make people listen.

    ReplyDelete