Everybody knows the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied.
A few people have asked me recently why I've stopped writing about The Hell, why issues other than the petro pus from the Macondo well have crept into my posts of late.
I figure it's mostly because I'm dumb. There are people way smarter than I who can tell you whatever you need to know about all that, and the consensus from the smarter people is clear: It's over. Move on.
There's no oil out there. The Lawrence Berkeley whitecoats have proved that the microbes ate it all. Hey, don't try to quote other eggheads at me, saying that the stuff's still there. Those Berkeley guys used DNA computers the size of credit cards. It cost 'em millions of bucks! Bucks that BP shelled out to settle the question.
Dispersants? Phah! The Environmental Protection Agency has said repeatedly that they're less toxic than oil, and way, way less toxic than oil and dispersants mixed together, and, since there's no oil out there, there isn't any oil/dispersant mixture, right?
That's why the seafood's so safe. Everybody'll tell you that, the fishers, the Seafood Association, restauranteurs. You see, the Department of Health and Human Services called up the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and let them know they'd sniffed eighty-four pieces of fish and none of them smelled like oil. Eighty-four! I doubt those seaweed-huggers at Gulf Restoration Whatever have sniffed that many fish.
Hell, the president of the United States was just down my block chowing down on some shrimp po boys. Who am I to question, eh?
It's all good in the watery hood, dude. Even BP's gone gracious, willing to admit that some low-level flunky might have misread a report. (No word on what those who gave those workers their orders might have known about that "nightmare well," but, hey, if a corporation's willing to admit the failings of its groundlings, what more can we ask for?)
Look, I'm a cynic, an alarmist, a defeatist, a naysayer. Just because I pass the big "Say No to Chinese Shrimp!" billboard on the 10 and secretly say "yes," doesn't mean anything. The eggheads, the marketers, the president-for-gods-sake have spoken. 'Sall cool. Ain't dere no more.
I should just give up. Head down to Parkway myself and stare off into space, a po-boy before me on the table like a bottomless glass of Victory Gin.
"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
Dressed. Extra pickles.