Time Marches On, Unfortunately

As July turns into August, I have the sense that time indeed is passing and another year is slipping through our fingers. Time really does seem to go by faster as you get older, you'd think it would be the opposite. Midsummer's Night is coming soon, I think it's August 3rd or 4th, and it is starting to get dark a tiny bit early than a couple weeks ago.

Some other things have happened recently as the summer drags on. This is day 104 of the Gulf oil spill and there is much relief that the underground well is not uncontrollably spewing millions of gallons of crude oil. They say the well may be permanently "killed" in a week or so. Does that mean the crisis is over? BP would like to think it is, but there are still 90 days worth of oil meandering around the gulf and it really isn't going anywhere. What, if anything, they can do about oil in the middle levels of the ocean no one knows. There are reliable reports that BP is doing or thinking about doing some unsavory things:

First of all they are pulling back on the fishing boats and other commercial water craft they have employed in the cleanup, like it's winding down or something.

Second, they are quietly getting the local hydrologists and environmental experts under contract for them to do "environmental assessments," with the sneaky caveat that any findings they come up with are the property of BP and cannot be released directly to the general public. The first thing you do in any state of war or catastrophe is control the information. When you control the information you control public opinion, and that in turn will allow you to do anything you want.

The third thing is that BP is thinking about taking a $10 billion tax write-off for the oil spill. And amazingly, under our tax code, it is perfectly legal to do that. Only in America can you cause the greatest environmental disaster in history and get to write it off on your taxes. If they are even a tiny bit smart, they will realize it would be the greatest public relations disaster in history if they went through with that. But something tells me BP is quite comfortable that they will be able to do so, despite their homey and faux-sincere ads about how terribly anxious they are to clean up their mess they created and they will be around until the bitter end. Or until the tax write-off runs out.

In other news of grotesque corporate mendacity, some 17 big-name banks who accepted government bail-out money also used $1.6 billion of said money to reward their top executives with huge bonuses, as the U.S. economy nearly imploded. Now Kenneth Feinberg, the so-called "compensation czar," whose job it is to oversee how executives are paid at banks who accepted the government's financial lifeline, has stated he can't do anything about that. The only thing he can do is "shame" the banks into giving the money back, he said, at which point the banks showed him their collective middle-finger and Feinberg crumpled like wet cardboard, saying that he thinks the banks have been "shamed enough already." Oh, not nearly enough, you mealy-mouthed asshole. They still need $1.6 billion worth of shaming.

The primary election season has officially started here as the early-voting ballots arrived in the mail. I read through the voter's guide a few days ago and there is almost no one I'm interested in voting for. They are all slightly different versions of the same pinheaded idiots that crop up every damned election cycle, each promising to change everything and work hard to make the lives of the "little people" better, but that never ever happens. As usual, choosing someone to vote for comes down to a depressing toss-up as to which candidate is the least offensive and will cause the least damage. And that is a hell of a messed-up way to choose your government.

The local candidates for Congress are really ugly and appalling people, loudly trumpeting the fact they are "conservative Republicans." The infamous SB 1070, the Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration was gutted by a federal judge hours before it went into effect, pleasing absolutely no one - friend or foe - and already it is being slung back and forth between candidates, with one candidate condemning the other for opposing it. There is such an undercurrent of racism and hatred in this state, it's really becoming obnoxious and toxic. It's so hard to understand how this country has become so polarized, and more importantly, is there any cure for it? Sadly, I can only see it getting worse and worse until finally something awful and terrible is going to happen to us all.

After the Fourth

Well, we got through another Fourth of July here in our little corner of paradise. We kind of lucked out this time, because it was sunny, clear and not blindingly hot. Of course the Phoenix version of "not blindingly hot" would cause widespread anxiety in most other parts of the country. We were actually a couple of degrees cooler than average - 104 degrees instead of 107 - but we will take any kind of "cooler" we can get. In most other parts of the country Independence Day sort of marks a half-way point through the summer season. But since we are graced with summertime temperatures through the first half of October, July 4th represents about one third down, two thirds yet to go.

We desert dwellers are now looking to the skies to bring us some relief in the form of the oft-promised but just as often missing-in-action monsoon storms. We get giddy with anticipation around midday as we watch the cumulus clouds pile up in massive, custard-like heaps in the northeast, hoping that later in the afternoon we will be treated to huge, torrential downpours and intense winds. In quite a few cases, all this drama and expectation is nothing but a big tease as storms pop all around us, but avoid the Valley of the Sun as if it were a big leper colony.

It's day 77 of the Gulf oil spill and the undersea well is still blowing oil into the water. It seems barely possible that this can continue for so long, and one wonders where all those millions and millions of gallons of crude oil are going. You can tell that news fatigue is starting to set in - the oil spill gets relegated to a spot on the news programs after the annual hot-dog eating contest and the latest professional athlete signing some preposterous, obscene gazillion-dollar contract.

By the way, is there anything as loathsome and disgusting as an eating contest? I am completely baffled why there is such interest in a bunch of repellent, gluttonous pigs cramming food down their gullets, like some kind of weird post-apocalyptic update of an ancient Roman food orgy. I can only hope that the participants come down with a terminal case of crapulence. Yes, there is such a word as "crapulence." It means "sickness caused by excessive eating or drinking." It's in the dictionary, check it out here. It's like the Word God made up a word as a gift for me. It's much classier than the more colloquial "craptacular." I plan on using words like "crapulent" and "flatulent" in conversation and correspondence as often as I can.

On the immigration front, we had someone named Barry Wong, who is a candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission, the governing body that controls utility rates, come up with a rather incredible idea of cutting off electrical power to illegal immigrants. This idea is breath-taking in its insanity and can probably make its own run for the most half-baked, ridiculous idea of the year. How this proposed law could implemented and enforced, Mr. Wong did not deign to explain, but in an area where the temperatures can reach 115 degrees or higher it this would be tantamount to murder. Also, you would have to know where all the illegal immigrants live before you can start cutting power, and most people here illegally go to a lot of trouble to keep that information from the authorities. I fail to see how the whole immigration debate is advanced by this kind of demented logic, but maybe it works as comic relief, in a pathetic kind of way.

Way to go, Cox Communications, for giving me a brand-new cable modem when my old one stopped working last Thursday night. Oh, I should point out that Cox decided they weren't going to support my old modem due to changes in their network, so when I called and complained about my high-speed internet service going away, they said it was my problem and I need to buy a new modem. They very graciously offered to sell me a new modem for the "discounted price of $39.99." I told them they can shove their discounted price up their discounted butts and started up the corporate ladder on Friday morning. After about an hour complaining they relented and delivered a shiny, brand-new Motorola modem to my house. So they get points for a good resolution but they also lose points because I had to force them to do the right thing. The lesson in all this, kids, is the squeaky wheel does indeed get the grease and don't give up when you know you're right. But it is kind of sad when you have to shame a big corporation into fixing a problem they themselves caused.

But hey, things are not that bad for me at all. I have a house full of happy rabbits and doves, lots of good friends, time to enjoy myself and get stuff done, and every reason to believe life will continue to be sweet and each day is to be savored and appreciated. I'm finding out that getting old kind of sucks, but with age comes a peace of mind and a level of contentment that just isn't possible when you are in your twenties or thirties. So I'm going to serve the bunnies their daily salad and think about the cooler days and nights which will surely come around again. In about 4 months.

Requiem for a Coastline, Part 2

Here we are at day 67 of the Gulf oil spill and things are still going to hell down there. After much fanfare they partially topped off the gushing oil pipe with some kind of cap, which worked sort of well until some underwater robot came by and screwed it up. So they had to open up a bunch of valves and recalibrate something which allowed the oil to gush out again just as before. This is what passes for progress in this situation.

Meanwhile the oil is spreading to the beaches and has wreaked havoc on Pensacola Beach, Florida. It was really heart-rending to see how emotional the residents of that city became when they realized this was only the beginning. They could see their former way of life slip and ebb away just like the tide, except that it will probably not be coming back for a very long time. Probably the hardest things to see go away are the most intangible - qualities that you can't feel or touch, but their absence will change everything. There are ominous stories of oil not only on the surface, but under water where it cannot be seen, and where we can't track where it's going or how extensive it is. And now, the possibility of the season's first hurricane looms further south in the Caribbean Sea. What that will do to an already cataclysmic situation will probably redefine the term "disaster" for the entire world.

And who knew the Brits would suck so badly at public relations? From the very beginning BP seemed to have tremendous luck finding one enormous PR pothole after the other to fall into, the first being a put-upon CEO Tony Hayward complaining that he "wants his life back." Well, I'm thinking the Gulf coast residents want their lives, their livelihood, and their way of life back, too. Have a cup of Earl Gray and a scone with clotted cream on me, Tony, and come back when you've thought about what you said. Then some other high muckety-muck in the company said he felt sorry for the "little people" who are having such a rough time. Some of these aforementioned "little people" felt like they had been sucker-punched in the mouth and then told they were a punk-ass bitch just for good measure. In the BP official's defense, English is not his primary language and probably didn't exactly mean that as it came across. But in this sound-bite world, that doesn't matter - the damage is done and people were steamed about it. Then Tony Hayward again threw oil on that fire by taking a day off to race his yacht in the pristine waters near the Isle of Wight off the English coast. That SO did not play well with the more egalitarian American audience. Add to all that BP's relentless low-balling of their estimates of how many gallons of oil are actually being spewed into the gulf, and their multi-million dollar advertising campaign telling all of us not to worry because they are doing so well in handling the cleanup and paying out claims (a campaign which is having exactly the opposite of the intended effect), and you have all the ingredients of a screw-up of epic, Biblical proportions.

And then Congress, who has never met a bad situation that it couldn't mess up even more, came through for us again big time at a Congressional committee investigation of the oil spill. The day before, the top brass at BP came to the White House for a good old-fashioned spanking by President Obama, and then this idiot Congressman from Texas (name is unimportant since they're all idiots) gets up at the committee hearing and apologizes to the BP executives for the shoddy treatment afforded them at the White House. Oh that made such a lovely sound bite all over the news programs for like three days. This brought a veritable flood of apologies from the lip-flapping Texan and a number of other Republican leaders but amazingly, they still allowed this moron to keep his seat on the Congressional committee. I really hope the Democrats can make political hay out of this one, and make the country realize that the "GOP" should really be the "GOBP."

And while we're on the subject of disgusting, loathsome, toxic spills, Sarah Palin, Queen of the Inbred, let a vast quantity of stupidity gush out of her mouth again at some speech last Friday in Turlock, California. Palin lent her "star power," such as it is, to raise money for a worthy cause, California State University-Stanislaus - a seemingly generous act until you understand that she still found it within herself to charge a $75,000 speaker's fee and request $18,000 in first class travel and accommodations for her scrawny worthless ass and all the crack whores and meth addicts she drags with her from Wasilla, Alaska. Way to raise money, Cal State Stanislaus, drop nearly $100K just to listen to some ignorant hillbilly rant about the evils of the "lamestream media" while being only dimly aware that if it weren't for the "lamestream media" that she so gleefully criticizes, she would be stuck in some 2-by-4 cage in a Wasilla breeding farm, popping out litters of babies to ensure that the prisons and drug dealers will be in business for decades to come.

This oil spill is far, far from over, and I fear it's going to one of those national catastrophes that will demarcate time into "before the spill" and "after the spill." The effects will be with us for decades and the impact of the destruction to the environment is only just begin felt. It probably won't be seen as on a par with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, since that incident was immediate, highly visual and instantly horrifying. The oil spill is a completely different event - much slower, not particularly flashy, and much more long-lasting - but in terms of sheer awfulness it will be up there in the rankings of infamy. But I do believe it will change how things are done in this country forever, as the terrorist attacks did, and maybe in the long view of history that will turn out to be the only good thing that comes from it. But right now all I see are soiled beaches and sea birds, turtles and dolphins dying from this expanding oil plague that the hubris and recklessness of man has inflicted on a singularly special and unique area of the Gulf coast.

Requiem for a Coastline

After forty-odd days of increasingly horrible news coming out of the spill area of the Gulf of Mexico, today brought the first real glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, engineers might be getting the upper hand in controlling the undersea gusher of crude oil left over from an oil rig explosion. Spewing many thousands of gallons of oil each day into the sea, the resultant oil plume has begun the slow-motion, agonizing destruction of one of the most unique and productive seashores in the entire world.

I think most people still don't understand the enormity of the unmitigated catastrophe unfolding in front of the world. The extremely painful videos and photographs of pelicans and sea birds saturated with thick, greasy, brown oil are so very hard to watch, but maybe that is what is needed to shock people into understanding the real tragedy and impact that the carelessness of humans has wrought on an epic scale.

Nor is there a lot of appreciation of the staggeringly difficult task that plugging the oil vent presents. All this is going on under nearly a mile of water, and there are very few environments on earth that are more hostile. The enormous water pressure, low temperature, currents and visibility issues all come together to make any activities especially difficult. Some idiots continue to say brainless things like, "if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we stop this leak?" Well, morons, putting a man on the moon was an incredibly difficult task, too. The lunar landing didn't just happen, it was the culmination of a decade of planning, engineering and just plain courage. Likewise, stopping this leak will entail a bit more than sending down a giant cork and hoping to be done by lunchtime.

Speaking of idiots, that intellectual pile of sludge known as Sarah Palin for some reason finds it necessary to open her big obnoxious yap about this subject, and predictably a torrent of stupidity rivaling the undersea oil leak blows out. She wrote some kind of incredibly dumb blather on Twitter addressed to "ExtremeGreenies," which I guess is her pet name for environmentalists, and tried to make the point that every time she stupidly repeated her dimwitted catchphrase "drill baby drill" over and over again like a retarded mynah bird she wasn't really yammering about drilling for oil offshore, but rather in places that she regards as environmentally safe drill areas like ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge). And somehow, she feels the Gulf oil spill proves she was right all along. Excuse me???

I guess this incredibly stupid, sad political hack thinks that an oil spill on pristine Alaskan tundra is preferable to an undersea oil spill. Sarah Palin is a gigantic, infected pimple on the ass of society and continues to redefine the outer boundaries of incompetence and stupidity with everything she bleats out in her annoying trailer-trash Barbie doll voice. Apparently at one point they tried to clog up the leaking oil pipes by stuffing it with cement and garbage like golf balls and shredded tires. What they should have done was stuffed the hole with Sarah Palin and BP executives. It just might have solved a lot of obnoxious problems at once.

It is so baffling trying to understand why that beautiful, serene part of the world is victimized repeatedly by disasters, both natural and man-made. A whole string of destructive hurricanes, topped by Katrina, have ravaged that area in recent years. Oil spills both large and small, continued pollution of the sea and air, the draining of natural wetlands to facilitate human development, and the construction over many years of a haphazard, crazy-quilt system of levees, dikes and dams have forever negatively altered the fragile interplay of sun, wind and ocean that make up the coast. Like watching a terminal cancer patient lose their battle with the disease, the death of the Louisiana coast is a supremely painful and unparalleled tragedy for America, made all the worse by the slow, inexorable and deliberate pace of its demise.