Oil Vey..!

Boy am I glad this week is over. Barring my usual crazy work schedule, I was mauled by a flue virus that rendered my brain useless and turned my sinuses into a mucus production factory. So the news this week appeared worse than ever as I was experiencing flue induced cold sweats....
This out of control oil well in the Gulf of Mexico really got my dander up and resurfaced some terrible memories like bloated floating cadavers in the spring.
When I was 19 and in California on a quest to find the hippie way of life, I experienced first hand the effects of minor oil spills on wildlife. By pure coincidence whilst hitchhiking in Berkeley, I was befriended by an oriental of the same age with very long hair named Donald who played the steel guitar and drove a fake wood panel station wagon always accompanied by his faithful black lab, raspberry. A typical Californian...(lol) Through some friends, Donald found us a place to stay that turned out to be a bird hospital in Berkeley, The Bird Rescue Center. Housed on top of a donated two story warehouse were recuperating birds, mostly water fowl, in huge water basins, rescued from offshore spills. The poor frightened oil soaked birds had to be sedated first and their plumage was gently cleaned in the hope they would survive this ordeal. Some of them did not overcome the shock and it was the saddest thing and a real eye opener to see them slowly die of unnatural causes.
The disaster also brought back memories of one of the darkest moments in environmental fights. Ken Saro Wiwa attracted international attention to the plight of the Ogoni people in Nigeria.
Shell Oil, with the complicity of the military government run by general Sani Abacha, had been unscrupulously exploiting the Niger Delta's rich oil reserves for 37 years decimating the environment and the livelihood of the poor Ogoni people. I saw images of this devastation and it made me sick to my stomach at the time. Saro Wiwa, a poet, was unjustly convicted of treason and was hung with eight of his comrades in November 1995 by the military regime.
You can read the communique from Green Peace here...http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/ken/murder.html
It didn't happen in anyone's backyard so no big fuss was made about this and that too made me sick to my stomach as well.
Call it the domino effect, the butterfly effect ,who gives a shit.Today, I feel the whole planet is our backyard. So much is riding on how this thing will play out. Already, some people are questioning the whole idea of offshore drilling in light of BP's inability to cap the runaway well. Maybe some good will come out of it. And how did BP they get a license to operate such a platform without having submitted a worse case scenario plan..? Apparently inspectors from the Minerals Management Service accepted meals and tickets to sporting events such as the Chick-fil-a-Peach Bowl game.
Personally, I would cap the hole with debris made of arrogant oil execs, corrupt agency regulators, Hummer owners and the ubiquitous Sarah Palin with her '' Drill baby, drill '' campaign slogan. Polluting a body of water of that size because of willful negligence, should be considered a crime against humanity and as such, should be punishable by at the very least, severe prison sentences to send a loud and clear message. What do you say Mr. Obama..? Are you pissed enough to show you've got the cojones to do the right thing..? We'll see...

Footnote: The picture of three ominous looking silos on the waterfront I took one morning reminded me of the fragility between industrialization and nature and how we always seem to be a stone's throw away from disaster.
Apparently this is not the first time BP finds itself in a row.
http://www.alternet.org/story/147045/why_isn't_bp_under_criminal_investigation?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet

Nice planet, we'll take it

Professor Stephen Hawking is probably the most intelligent man on the face of the Earth. He now occupies a chair that was once held by Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most influential people in human history. In a recent Discovery Channel series, he warns about making contact with aliens, claiming they could raid our planet for resources.
Come again....! This seems like a stretch of the imagination, even for my hippie era chemically altered synapses.
What resources are we talking about here..? Oil..? Unless they use kerosene lamps for ambiance aboard their spaceships, I don't think they need this kind of fuel to hop from one galaxy to another. I've yet to hear of a UFO sighting where an ET vehicle ascended rapidly leaving a trail of diesel black smoke.
Water..? Most of our drinking water is contaminated. And the one that's not smells like fish. So unless the extra terrestrials are more of a reptilian origin and like a little low tide stink with their drink...I think not.
Wood..? We still have a lot of that even though we're trying hard to deplete it. Maybe they're into making their own Ikea like furniture or just carvings and candle holders to sell at intergalactic craft fairs.
Very improbable.
Uranium also comes to mind. But since most observers report them as being gray, hairless and androgynous, I suspect that they already have their cosmic hands on ample supplies of the radioactive gold .
Actually, the only resource I envision the space travelers would contemplate plundering are Happy Meals from McDonald's and Nike sneakers. Those, we have in abundance and would gladly turn over... for a price, mind you.
As far as making hostile contact with us, somebody should warn the aliens. We could nuke them five times over. We're sitting on 23,300 (disclosed) nuclear warheads spread around the world. We'd destroy ourselves in the process. But as the great thespian Sylvester Stalone once said...'' Gotta do what I gotta do''.
Besides, we also possess a complete arsenal of bacteriological and viral goodies we could throw at the invaders. H1n1, swine flue, small pox, aids, Ebola and the ever popular anthrax to name just a few. We could conjure up a welcome cocktail that would make them wish they had never set foot on our lowly planet after bleeding from the eyes for days and turning inside out with diarrhea. This would come after our first line of defense will have set the tone for the confrontation. An army of drunken hillbillies wearing I'm with stupid t-shirts and carrying double barrel shotguns loaded with 6 inch nails and broken glass would no doubt repel even the foolhardiest of space conquerors.
So as you can see, I don't loose sleep over this. I'm more worried about what the harm that we humans can do rather than some alien predators taking over what's left of our dismal planet. Professor Hawking did however coin this phrase of wisdom which should remain etched in our collective conscience for future generations.
''We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet''.
Amen to that....!


Footnote: After raking my brain this week to find a suitable picture to illustrate this blog, I settled on the trailer for Mars Attacks! by Tim Burton. Burton produced this little gem to show how Ed Wood, the worst producer to ever come out of Hollywood, would've crafted another one of his scifi duds, with the movie technology available in 1996.

Flip side

Today I thought we'd have a little fun with Adobe Photoshop, probably the best piece of software ever written. When I was a kid, I got a kick out of Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde and how the bad side in each and everyone of us is only a thin layer away. Then, growing up, this dichotomy of sorts was resurfaced by one of my all time favorite authors, Edgar Allan Poe, and specifically in the story William Wilson.
What the hell does Photoshop have to do with Edgar Poe you're probably wondering. Well, when I started doing darkroom work, we use to do trick imagery.
One of my personal favorites was to combine the same half of a face by flipping the negative. Since our facial features are asymmetric, the results are often puzzling to say the least. Of course, this is where Photoshop is used in lieu of getting our hands wet in a badly ventilated homemade darkroom while preventing your loved ones from using the crapper as you dabble at your craft.
Let's take our fearless leader, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for example. You'll see in the middle pic from the PM's website, that he looks the part. Caring yet firm,even genuine.

Everything you would expect from a guy who's daily job is to run a country in the free world. Now take a look at flip #2 on the left. This guy looks like the kind of guy you would trust without blinking an eye. Kind, benevolent, has a wife and kids, involved in the community, helps old ladies cross the street. Hell..! he even sings Beatles songs while playing the piano. We'll call him Angel Eyes.
Then there's this guy in flip pic #3 on the right.Let's call him The Prorogator. He comes across as being devious, antidemocratic and ready to sacrifice everybody's future, including his children's, for the sake of big oil interests,just like he did in Copenhagen.
The point here I guess is that, as there are two sides to every coin, there are two sides to every person. Unfortunately, like it plays out in Poe's William Wilson, Stephen Harper's bad side is slowly winning over the good and it's scary...