The BP oil spill has liberal commentators running around in circles and paraphrasing the last line from the Movie Little Caesar: "Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?" Well, BP wants to ask the world a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, treehuggers?
Aficionados of the esoteric literature designed to provide accurate "how to" information to folks contemplating suicide know that there is a right way and wrong way to slit your own wrists. If that ghastly method of ending it all is used as a metaphor for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it seems that BP, which would have the public believe that a turn around will work, may have botched things up completely in the irreversible "you’re a gonner" mode rather than the rush to the emergency room less effective way to slit the world’s writs.
While an irreversible ecological catastrophe that will slowly and irrevocably lead to the extinction of all life on planet earth might sound rather lugubrious to many people, there is a bright side to the possibility: the BP oil spill will be a win-win situation for both tree huggers and the Conservative Christians.
If the environmentalists, who are asserting that if the flow from the BP drilling platform mechanical malfunction isn’t stopped soon all the world’s marine life will become extinct and the production of oxygen by the world’s oceans will cease and humanity and all other living animals will die of asphyxiation, are right in their assessments then they will have also won the debate concerning the odds on extinction for polar bears. Aren’t the scientists who promote the global warming theory, the very same ones who are saying that oxygen comes from the oceans? For the time remaining, the tree huggers can taunt the conservative "Drill, baby, drill!" coterie with the "See we tried to warn you!" playground cry of delight.
The conservative compassionate Christians, on the other hand, will be thrilled and delighted by the realization that Judgment Day is rapidly approaching.
How long will it be before some enterprising Republican starts selling blobs of oil spill goop on e-Bay?
If, fifty years from now, things are going along according to the usual rules of nature (i.e. the Yankees are winning beaucoup World Series games and the Rolling Stones are setting attendance records on their latest tour) then the tree huggers who predicted the end of the world are going to loose a large share of their recently won credibility.
If, on the other hand (gotta be fair and balanced), the oil is still gushing from the ocean floor when this fall’s elections roll around, the Teabaggers will be left in their jaw dropping incredulity pose while the liberals mop up on the election results and the BP executives continue their "Moe, Larry . . . cheese" response to their noteworthy goof.
Is the oil spill one of those binary choice deals? Heads or tails? Extinction or expensive clean up? Isn’t there some way that it can be downgraded to an answer in a future news-trivia contest?
Once upon a time, we asked writer Dennis Etchison if he had ever flipped a coin and had it land on edge. His response was "George (Clayton Johnson) wrote a Twilight Zone episode about that." We responded with our relevant anecdote about the time when we flipped a coin in the sauna and the coin landed in such a way that if fell between the slats on the wooden seat and thus it had, in effect, landed on edge.
It seems that the oil slick question is of the binary choice kind. A cleanup may be an impossibility and it will then be time for the world to adjust to the idea of a gigantic (like a Sydney New Year’s bash?) party in the spirit of a condemned man’s final meal.
It could be that taxpayers (why do somepeople think U. S. = "Uncle Sucker"?) will pick up the check for the enormous cleanup bill and life will just move on (dot org?).
Maybe voters this fall will let the Republicans set the agenda and make the crucial election issue a rather crude debate about racial profiling for both Arizona and the occupant of the White House. The Republicans teabaggers were getting rather cocky (is that pun too much for the readers to swallow?) about their chances for a contract with America resurgence this fall. The Liberals are hoping that the BP gusher put a damper on that possibility.
Maybe, just this once, the Democrats will set the agenda and make the fall elections a national referendum on the Republican "Drill, baby, drill!" philosophy?
Speaking of elections and the topic that dares not speak its name on this website, the conservative buzz is that a hidden Republican strategy is awaiting Republican landslide election results. A conservative sweep will then be followed by the public unveiling of a sheet of paper with a signature asserting that the student loan application that is a sworn affidavit asserting that the applicant was eligible for a foreign student loan. Such a hypothetical document could, if that particular student actually was not a foreign born student, cause strong repercussions of the impeachment proceedings kind.
It seems we are back to concerning ourselves with a fictional Twilight Zone episode synopsis.
We had been asking ourselves why the oil companies hadn’t invented a way to use a vacuum cleaner type mechanical device for retrieving the oil from the ocean rather than let it go to waste on the beaches of the Gulf states, when we heard a news report asserting that actor Kevin Kostner’s brother had invented just such an item based on the principles of centrifugal force.
Heck, if BP can send cameras down to the source of the leak, and if they can drill all that way down beyond the ocean floor, why can’t their engineers come up with a way to skim the oil slick off the top of the ocean water and put it into the tanks on waiting ships?
If they could do that; they could then make a profit on all the spilled oil. Isn’t that the same motivational reason for doing the drilling? Well, then, why let it float away in a spill?
Aren’t the arctic hunters smart enough to kill the polar bears with baseball bats rather than shooting them and coping with a bullet hole in the hide? Well, BP, don’t let all that oil sitting on top of the Gulf of Mexico’s water just float away! Scoop it up!
Is BP being smug about it? Are they living up to the rich oil man’s code? Can’t ya just hear a BP executive saying: "Everybody thought I had a duster. Y'all thought ol' Spindletop Burke and Burnett was all the oil there was, didn't ya? Well, I'm here to tell you that it ain't, boy! It's here, and there ain't a dang thing you gonna do about it! My well came in big, so big, Bick and there's more down there and there's bigger wells. I'm rich, Bick. I'm a rich 'un. I'm a rich boy. Me, I'm gonna have more money than you ever thought you could have -- you and all the rest of you stinkin' sons of ... Benedicts!"
Now the disk jockey will play the theme music from the movie "Giant," "Slip sliding away," and "Blue Bayou." We gotta go and reenact the "gusher comes in" scene from Giant. Have an "I’m a rich boy" type week.
BP, cleanup, snark, more snark, Uber-snark
The BP oil spill has liberal commentators running around in circles and paraphrasing the last line from the Movie Little Caesar: "Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?" Well, BP wants to ask the world a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, treehuggers?