The countdown continues until BP finds a way to plug the leaking oil gushing out into the Gulf. Unfortunately for everyone, the countdown is rather open-ended, since BP hasn’t exactly figured out a way to effectively stop things. People are clamoring for heads to roll, goats to scape, and for solutions to the current crisis. While I’m not a petroleum engineer per se (although I have pumped a few gallons on gas in my day), I thought that I would weigh in with a few suggestions of my own about how to handle the leaky pipe.
1) Do nothing. Yeah, yeah, environmental impact, oil spill, blah, blah, blah. Everyone is complaining about the damage to the coast and the beaches. I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but every beach from New Orleans east to about Corpus Christi was already polluted and full of chemicals. If people didn’t want to go to a beach that was covered in oil and chemical discharge, Galveston would have folded up shop long ago. In fact, having grown up on that particular section of the Gulf, I was in high school before I realized that all beaches didn’t feature chocolate brown water with a rainbow sheen.
2) Counterinject the areas with radioactive chemicals. Sounds crazy? Well, crazy like a fox maybe. If people are really worried about the wildlife surviving the oil spill, what better way to toughen them up than to dose them with radioactivity a la the Incredible Hulk. While a little oil may kill some poor weak fish, it’s only going to serve as a food source for a six-eyed 475 lb. nuclear flounder. Ok, so maybe we find that there is a real life Mega Shark v. Giant Octopus scenario playing out, but they could certainly sell that onto pay-per-view. Plus, with these giant mutant fish growing in the Gulf, the fishing industry will come back with a bang. Can you imagine how much less seafood we will have to import when every shrimp that we catch is two feet long, weighs 14 pounds, and has to be subdued with a Taser?
3) Move all cable news broadcasts to the Louisiana coasts. If you had every TV talking head from Fox News, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg, and Telemundo move to outdoor broadcasts from the affected areas, the hot air produced would either (1) blow the oil back into the Gulf where it could be sucked out by waiting ships or (2) ignite the oil and burn it off the top. Either way, problem solved. If, at the end, we could also set the anchors/personalities adrift into the currents, I don’t think too many tears would be shed.
4) Plug the leak with the now-outdated Texas history textbooks. Texas has a problem, its existing history and social studies textbooks are historically inaccurate and full of bad examples in the form of socialist thinkers like Thomas Jefferson, Susan B. Anthony, Betsy Ross, and Thurgood Marshall. Luckily, we caught this error in time and our Education Board was quick enough to edit out any references to these rabble-rousers. The problem that we have is what to do with the millions of textbooks that are full of this incendiary material. We can’t send them to another state, like California, lest they get (further) indoctrinated by this filth. So, instead, we should round them up and offer them to BP as a means to plug the hole. Sure, Thomas Jefferson may not have done anything for this country while he was alive, but his memory can serve to eliminate one of nature’s worst natural manmade disasters.
I hope that BP is taking notes, because this stuff is gold–not black gold of course, as that’s currently flowing into the Gulf at a rate greater than the people responsible will ever admit. Until they get it stopped though, I’m going to keep my eyes on the seafood counter at the local supermarket to see if any MegaShrimp are going to make an appearance.
May 26, 2010 at 10:37 pm |
It’s all fun and games till those MegaShrimp start attacking tourists and the military.
May 26, 2010 at 10:40 pm |
It’s all fun and games until the MegaShrimp start attacking tourists and the military.
Plug the leak with Arizona’s illegal immigrants!