[please see UPDATE at bottom]
Boomer! Glad to see ya back! Today we're going to discuss a more challenging boom. We're going to boom a pass between a barrier island and the mainland. Stick with the main concepts and you'll have no trouble at all.
There's a course prerequisite for this school and if you haven't taken it, GO THERE NOW. That way, you won't hold the rest of us back by posting comments bitching about my goddam fucking language. You'll also get good and pissed off and you'll see why we learn fucking proper fucking booming.
Okay, they're gone. Rest of you boomers, follow me over the hump and we'll....
WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT? GET OUT OF THERE! YOU GUYS GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!
Excuse me a moment, DKos Boomers, we have a little problem here.
What the fuck are you doing? You're who? National Guard? This is the fucking coast! Shouldn't you be the Coast Guard? Well you.... what? Who sent you? Get that fucking helicopter the fuck out of here, I can't hear. Okay, who sent you? Jimmy? Oh.... Jindal? Goddamit. Governor Bobby Jindal? What are you building? A.... YOU! GET THE FUCK OFF THAT DIRT AND GET OVER HERE!
You're building what? You're damming off the pass? What are you trying to stop? A GOD DAMNED FUCKING EKRANOPLAN?
Oil? All this for oil? You don't stop oil, man. You divert it. Tellum DKos Boomers! DKos Boo..... Soldier put on your shirt. My Lady DKos Boomers aren't listening to me. Ya, some of the Men DKos Boomers are a little distracted too, looks like. Hey. It's Daily Kos. We got rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell a long time ago. Okay....
Bobby Jindal doesn't know what he's doing here, guys. He's fighting an oil spill like a war or a flood. You block this pass off with these dirtbags and mounds of dirt, you're gonna kill this marsh. The life here evolved with the current that moves through this pass. Nutrients, oxygen... you're creating a slackwater zone in a marsh that is used to tides and current. There's little critters that keep the algae off the grass stems and reeds. They need oxygen and a specific salt-freshwater mix. They eat the algae and keep the grass healthy. You kill them and the marsh becomes a big flat of rotting vegitation. But... where did you get that dirt? 300 yards inland? That dirt's poison for this marsh. Couldn't be worse than if you brought it from Nebraska. It's alien fucking dirt in this environment. It's worse than the fucking oil. And Jindal will leave it here forever if we let him. Lets get that shit out of here and we'll all get together and lay some fucking proper fucking boom.
Soldier put on your shirt.
You work out, huh?
Here's today's boom, DKos Boomers!
We started with the pass. We would have done the face of the island and the mainland to the right, about like we did with that flat stretch of shoreline last time. The layered "Vs" or whatever.
We're using a fucking cement catch basin this time, because if we need to, we can float it a little ways off the bank when the tide comes in. The curves in the boom are created by adjusting the middle and end ropes on each section. I did it this way this time to show you something. It's like the Perl programming language. There's more than one way to do it. You could show up at this pass and make long straight layers converging on the catch basin and it would work fine. Because there's boom tenders 24/7 (YOU, Boomers) and if it isn't working you fuck with the ropes until it does. Divert the oil to the catch basins. That's pretty much all you have to remember. However you do it, you're going to be doing a lot more for this marsh than Jindal did. Jindal is killing it before the oil ever gets here.
Those pics are really from the passes of Louisiana -- a few days ago -- it's sickness. It is fucking insanity. In fairness, Bobby was begging BP for boom a few days ago. It's only just now arriving from Bumfuck Egypt or some fucking where, and not near enough of it. So maybe Governor Jindal thought he had to be doing something other than waiting on boom. Maybe fucking Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen had no idea of what was going on with Governor Jindal because fucking Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen was spending all his time reading BP-written talking points to the fucking media.
"Several, several options are being exhausted here," said Adm. Thad Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. "We have engineers that are on scene in Houston with British Petroleum."
Fuck. Me.
Obama. FIRE HIM! FIRE HIM OR FUCK YOU!
Obama needs to decapitate the USCG immediately, put a hard ass in charge, and then personally tell BP that the United States of America is not going to be pushed around by some half-assed self-important British corporation.
This is OUR country. WE run things here.
BP has waged an attack on our COAST, and the present Commandant of the United States COAST Guard is showering BP with praise. Fisrt step: Fire his ass.
Fucking Hazardous Materials Training
Okay. Hazardous Materials Training. Every Boomer needs it. Oil is like fucking Kryptonite. If any touches you, you have cancer. Bullshit. If you fucking boom, you're going to get oil on you. You'll live. You're not a Bottlenose Dolphin who gets a little in his lungs every time he surfaces to breath and then soon he can't breath. You're not a fish, getting its gills covered and the protective slime layer disolved from its sides. You're not a baby shrimp. You're not coral. You're not any form of marine life. If you were, oil might in fact be like Kryptonite. You're a human. Take a good shower after your shift and you'll be fine. Honest. This guy is a research biologist.
By the end of the day, he'll have oil all over himself. He'll eat oil with his tater chips for lunch. The fisheries guys have been going home covered in oil, every day, for weeks now. They shower. They're fine.
When BP was training the fishermen as boomers, that's what they trained. Hazardous Materials. To Vietnamese fellas. BP covers it's ass. Had them sign off on it. Didn't teach them anything about booming, but they had them a Hazardous Materials course. Told them not to kick alligators. They really did tell them that.
Fuck. Me.
Fucking Test Time
Okay. Test time. Here's some fucking boomage.
Doesn't really look too bad, eh? It's got two layers! But oil will go through it like shit through a goddam goose. Why?
UPDATE: I'm a little too tough on Governor Jindal here and I need to correct that. Governor Jindal's state has been attacked by BP, literally attacked by a foreign power, and he hasn't gotten nearly enough real material support. Not from BP. Not from DC.
Oh! Once BP finally released a couple more nuggets of leak video, it turns out that well is leaking A LOT more than BP and the Coast Guard and the Media said it was! Shaviv and Tyto Alba have EXCELLENT diaries on that.
AND! AND! A superb diarist, Unenergy, gives us another superb diary about the real root cause of this disaster. If we didn't USE so much energy, we wouldn't have to drill for it in places where it can do this to us. Rec this up. It's more of a real answer than my leak diaries are.
