Spewing More Than Just Oil in the Gulf

British Petroleum officials are having a hard time keeping their oil-slicked boots out of their mouths in the wake of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform which killed 11 workers and has resulted in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. To wit, its CEO, Tony Hayward, was forced by his PR flacks to apologize after he told Louisiana residents “I’d like my life back.”

Yeah, wouldn’t we all, especially the dead workers and dead wildlife.  BP’s attempts to block the media from capturing the extent of the damage, with the complicity of the Coast Guard, are starting to crack.  Apparently, so is their CEO.

Charlie Riedel from the Associated Press got images that would tear apart the most cynical and blackened of hearts, except, of course, the one belonging to a certain Halliburton executive/former vice-president who has seen his stock options go up 3,281% in one year, according to a Senate study.

The good people at the Natural Resources Defense Council are tirelessly covering and speaking out about this so-called “accident” and have compiled some of the bullshit spewing out of the mouth of BP CEO Hayward.

>>The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” Hayward told The Guardian on May 14. “The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” His statement came at the same time that independent scientists were offering strong evidence that BP and the government were continuing to vastly underestimate the size of the disaster.  (Not to mention the Gulf is not an ocean).

>> “It was a bit bumpy to get it going. We made a few little mistakes early on,” Hayward said in the same interview, acknowledging that the company erred when requiring fishermen who wanted to help with the relief effort to sign agreements limiting any future damages they could receive from BP.

>>I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest,” Hayward told Sky News on May 18.

>> “The oil is on the surface. There aren’t any plumes,” Hayward told The Associated Press on May 30, even as scientists from the University of South Florida, the University of Georgia, Southern Mississippi University, and other institutions were reporting evidence of massive underwater oil plumes — including one 22 miles long, six miles wide, and more than a thousand feet deep.

>> “I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning or some other reason for them being ill,” Hayward told CNN on May 30 in response to relief workers being treated for illnesses apparently related to breathing oil fumes and dispersants.

>>Almost nothing has escaped,” Hayward told the Financial Times (registration required) on May 15.

>>What the hell did we do to deserve this?” Hayward said to BP executives, as reported in The New York Times on April 29.

The people and wildlife of the Gulf and the world ask themselves the same thing, Hayward.

ADD: If you want to do more than scream obscenities at your computer screen, the International Bird Rescue and Research Center and Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research Center are in Louisiana, leading efforts to clean up the pelicans and other wildlife.

[Photos: Charlie Riedel, Associated Press]
76 Comments

Ima cry now.

And it’s a GULF not a fucking OCEAN. This disaster will reach land across the pond. Trust.

ADD: Oh, and it’s screwing with those wee migratory birds that fly from S. America to the Arctic. They stop by NJ and eat horseshoe crab eggs. They were dying off, but then they started to rebound. Will soon be extinct because of this fuck up of monumental proportions.

Time to nationalize BP.

And make the executives eat the dead animals.

@FlyingChainSaw: I’d rather shove the dead animals up their asses, beak first.

@JNOV: And wait a few days, pull them out, and make them eat the dead animals.

@SanFranLefty: There ya go! We all have an inner FCS! I’m loving your posts, Lefty. Very much so. <3

OT/What's up with the tag line (or whatever it's called) in the right upper corner? Did someone get disemvoweled, is it a stock ticker or what?

@SanFranLefty: Then wait an hour for the carcass to extrude out their ass, and cram it back down once again. Dante called, he’s created a new circle of Hell for these asswipes.

ADD: the last two really do make me want to weep. Lefty, I knew this was your post from the first line, goddam I’m proud to be allowed in the same room as you people.

ADD2: I’m a gonna watch me another episode of “Breaking Bad” because, you know, that isn’t depressing.

@Nabisco:

[G]oddam I’m proud to be allowed in the same room as you people.

Yes, and with you, too.

Fuck ’em

Drown them all in oil

On pay-per-view

Slowly

@FlyingChainSaw: Just trying to channel my inner Chainsaw. This story has me so upset, I don’t have to reach too far to find it.

Donde esta la baked? Here’s some pix and show notes from Metallica’s May 22 show in Tel Aviv. They opened with Creeping Death,* which was inspired by the depiction of the plagues of Egypt in the movie The Ten Commandments.

Now
Let my people go, land of Goshen
Go
I will be with thee, bush of fire
Blood
Running red and strong down the Nile
Plague
Darkness three days long, hail to fire

So let it be written, so let it be done
I’m sent here by the chosen one
So let it be written, so let it be done
To kill the first-born pharaoh son
I’m creeping death

Die by my hand
I creep across the land
Killing first-born man

* live video. saw them on that tour in Albuquerque (1997).

@FlyingChainSaw: You and manchu should write new anti-BP lyrics for Creeping Death, or for Blackened,* which is Metallica’s elegy for a dying Earth.

Blackened is the End
Winter it will send
Throwing all you see
Into obscurity

Death of Mother Earth
Never a rebirth
Evolution’s end
Never will it mend

Never…!

FIRE
To begin whipping Dance of the Dead,
Blackened–is the–End!
To begin whipping Dance of the Dead,
Color our world Blackened!

* saw this show on the World Magnetic Tour in Albuquerque, October 2008.

@JNOV: Was home, held my biscuits and Ma Nabisco, we did fambly things, I cut the lawn and read to my kids, taught Jr how to use the mower and marveled at how beautifully clean and warm and bright they keep that wonderful nest of ours. Then I got on a plane and I’m back in lotus land again. I’m home again later this summer.

There’s an East Coast Stinque Up a-brewin, possibly aboard the SS Promnight if the Cap’n agrees, bring your gee-tar hero around, your big brothers will take him out back and make sure he’s on the up and up. I may have to mention cousin RML and den mother Lefty, you know, just to keep him honest.

@Nabisco: Haha! He’s just some dude I met on a bus. Not sure that he’s fit for bringing anywhere. Not sure he’s fit for anything. He’s interesting, though…

@Nabisco: I know I’m outta da loop because of the FB thing, but PLEASE let me know what’s going down. My summer is getting busier every passing day. I’ll probably moving to Prom’s state late summer/early fall.

@Nabisco: I been thinking about a roadie, so lemmie know.

Excellent job, SFL. Of course, now I’m going to need a post featuring a shirtless Jon Hamm snuggling an adorable kitten to restore my will to live.

Speaking of kittens, may I assume today’s tweet is by nojo’s new kitteh, or is this some new lol-speak the kids are using? If the latter, get the hell off my lawn.

@Prommie: @redmanlaw: @Nabisco: I’m booked the weekend of July 31st and might be going to Grand Teton later in August. Maybe not. I don’t have those plans hammered down yet, but I have a friend coming from Australia, soooooo. I dunno.

ADD: And I’ve got something going on 8/20

@Mistress Cynica: Tommmcatt postmodern spam for Viagra and Cialis.

@Mistress Cynica: I hear you, my dear. No kitteh present, but this one is pretty yummy.

Wait a second: The Jon Hamm Rule is that Jon Hamm is only to be deployed in retaliation for a Stormy post. Demanding that Jon Hamm be deployed whenever you’re bummed is moving the goalposts.

@JNOV: She said “teton.”

Butt-head: [reading off the washing machine] Huh huh huh, it says ‘load’.

Beavis+Butt-head: [[singing to the tune of “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest ] Washing the dog, washing the dog! Washing the dog!

Butt-head: [placing the dog in a washing machine] It’s a poodle, set it on “delicate”.

@nojo: Wait a second: The Jon Hamm Rule is that Jon Hamm is only to be deployed above the timestamp in retaliation for a Stormy post. Demanding that Linking in the comments to pics of delicious Jon Hamm be deployed whenever you’re bummed is moving the goalposts totally cool.

Fixed!

@nojo: Then Cristiano Ronaldo should be our Superfluous Dude post.

@redmanlaw: Let me take a swing at it. Never really interrogated the Metallica literature. Seriously listened to their cover of Astronomy by the Blue Oyster Cult, a competent second-generation copy but no real advancement on the piece’s central motifs. Read a write up of their San Francisco Symphony treatment of their work and wasn’t surprised that the arranger had to inform the band of the time signatures that they were employing so they could understand the meter that the conductor was marking.

@Prommie: Precisely and, um, sorry for opening up the gig to the gang without asking first, Cap’n. Ma Nabisco is totally down for it, more off-line, m’kay?

@redmanlaw: Great minds, etc. I love that B&B episode. The poodle quote was a go-to reference of mine throughout the mid-90s.

@nojo: How many Stormy posts did we suffer before getting the Jon Hamm equity rule, hmmm? We are owed, dude.

@Mistress Cynica: Please. Certain Stinquers of adolescent tastes were posting pictures of that poor anemic girl when a real woman of robust health was available for admiration by one and all. I speak of course of the future Nobelist and Academy Award winner Christina Hendricks, a women whose countenance could only be improved by the staging of a extended make out scene with Elisabeth Kucinich and whose very presence in any venue will provoke such savage wreltnies that all flesh on the men observing her will be pulled taught to an extent that facial and limb musculature will vrmph mrrrfffgllll eeerrjk.

@Mistress Cynica: The Management does not permit consideration of Stormy Reparations.

@FlyingChainSaw: Ever wish you were an olive?

ADD: caution, the song totally blows.

@Nabisco: Huh. It shouldn’t blow, given the pedigree (Danger Mouse and the dude from The Shins), but there you have it.

@Nabisco: I made it to 1:28. Yes, she rhmphfz, ghrfftnk. . .

The alleged music sounds like the rhythm and piano tracks to an Electric Light Orchestra tune that the band somehow forgot to complete with voices and lead instrumentals.

@FlyingChainSaw:

Mute it if you have to – the rest of the video is completely bizarre. The director and the writers must have spent about a week taking every breath through a lit bong to come up with the “plot” involved…

@FlyingChainSaw: Damn, Chainsaw, you certainly love the gingers, don’t you – Christina and Elisabeth? What, Shelly O isn’t good enough for Mrs. Kucinich any more? The thought of those two hottie redhead women who look like women going at it with another gets me all tingly, too, why should it be left to the str8 men? And if you threw in Shelly O, I’d be gone to mmougjfidggfdl dktrrk too.

@nojo: Stormy Reparations For All!!!
What if I did a post that was Jon Hamm and Christina Hendricks together? And when are those two going to finally get it on? (My head may explode from the hotness).

@mellbell: The ‘Saw explains it well. For those of us who lived through survived the Seventies, it is cringe-inducing.

@SanFranLefty: Christina Hendricks is really a classic beauty. I find her cartoonish figure distracting rather than alluring, but her face and the expressions she makes with it on camera are amazing.

Question for the masses: why is it that one of many str8 male fantasies (we contain multitudes) is hawt wmn going at it? I mean, were it to happen IRL I think that we’d be rather threatened – “hey, hold on there, that bit’s meant for me!”

/Nabisco, overthinking/

@SanFranLefty: Never really grouped women of exceptional health who’ve drawn my attention in that way but yes I guess I see the pattern now that you’ve point it out. I don’t think Michelle has an exclusive relationship with Elizabeth and Michelle herself would most appreciate a tongue-twisting, lip-crushing make out session between Christina and Elisabeth on the White House lawn.

@FlyingChainSaw: Stinque After Dark, Chainsaw-style? I think that confession of a perchance for redheads is the closest you’ve ever come to a late night overshare. It’s SO your turn!

@flippin eck: I merely recognized that SFL had detected a pattern consisting of two data points. Hardly an exhaustive statistical sample and therefore without conclusive power. I will confess to nothing in this regard though women of Exceptional Health in my opinion defy the contemporary standards that require women to look like concentration camp victims or worse.

@FlyingChainSaw: This presumes there’s a third data point, yet to be discovered.

@FlyingChainSaw and Nabisco: This discussion of “distracting” figures and “women of Exceptional Health” reminds me of something I read recently on the Jez (please, restrain yourselves, you victims of the Jezebel Panty Raid) that analyzed the BMI and weight of female actresses on tee vee in the past 25 years. It’s really insidious how freakishly skinny has become “normal” for the most extra of extras, let alone star women. I’m watching some Season One X-Files in the past week with Mr. SFL and we keep commenting on how “healthy” and “non-anorexic” our goddess Scully is. The Jez article compared and contrasted the first and last seasons of Friends to make that point, but I think it’s when you watch (gah!) 17 year old shows like X-Files or throw-back shows like Mad Men that you realize how bizarre the pendulum has swung w/r/t popular culture of female body image. It makes me worried about the Daughters of Stinquers, that they will be able to stand up to it, but it’s bizarre how even Miss Feminist like me internalizes what is “average” from a minimum amount of tee-vee watching.

@flippin eck: Oh, and last time I checked you were close to a redhead…maybe ChainSaw will finally have to do a Chicago Stinque-Up with you, HF, and CB to see it for himself.

@SanFranLefty: /looks up from fly tying bench

Scully?

Then there’s Amy Adams.

@SanFranLefty: Heh. But I’m afraid a brunette with reddish tints (courtesy of L’Oreal) is a far cry from a true redhead. At least I can say Elizabeth and Christina got nuthin on me height-wise.

@SanFranLefty: When I said “distracting” I meant that I wasn’t necessarily attracted by enormity of her assets, but rather that her figure – very healthy, indeed – detracts/distracts from her face’s elegant beauty. I too shrink at the trend towards junkie chic that started with that one-time Johnny Depp arm candy (blanking on the name), and since I am a BWD (breeder with daughter) I also hope she will maintain a healthy body and self image. This especially in light of the fact that she will no doubt be freakishly tall – how do tall women (that’s you, denmother) keep from developing the slumped shoulders of a girl who just wants to “fit in” despite her elevation?

@flippin eck: My first real gf was a readhead, and she was a beauty in every way, plus seriously damn smart with a swimmer’s body that at 16 made me swoon. Since then I’ve always gravitated towards brunettes (Ma Nabisco knows exactly the type that will turn my head) but you never get over your first “ginger”*.

*I have never in all my life used that term, isn’t it mildly offensive?

OT/ at the gym this morning, this was the lineup on the monitors above the bikes: CNN, BBC and the Fashion Channel which had a delightful runway segment of lingerie models. Guess which one I was watching? Hint: I was pushing 150 watts for a good 15 minutes with no effort.

@Nabisco: I never even heard the term Ginger before the South Park episode, and it covers a number of my cousins.

In which case, I’m all for it.

Woman on TV. Head shot.

“When it came time to get my carpet cleaned…”

I’d pay to see the outtakes.

Wow. I missed all the fun.

Born a ginger — becoming one again thanks to body art henna slapped on my head. Love!

@nojo: Right!

@SanFranLefty: The Jez isn’t all bad. That’s where I started, but I rarely go back. I was a big fan of Moe (I hear that collective groan.)

Man, my kid woke me up at EFFIN 3 AM to ask if he could go to the Wawa. If I ever wanted to strangle that child, today is the day.

@Nabisco: I think she’ll be fine. My weight issues were tied to my parental issues and my mom’s prescription speed as a weight loss drug habit. It’s hard to measure up, or down, to a 95-lb woman, especially when you have 6 inches on her. Blargh. Another topic for another day.

Sorry about horning in on the Stinque Up. I’m getting back on FB — you’ll recognize me — I unanglocized my last name.

oh good and powerful den mother
NO YOU DI-ENT !!! i expected this from noge.
the oily birds are driving me insane. yeah yeah, pack light..short trip…
PR ads? PR ADS??? there’s a face i’d like to shove a bird into.
ima go take medication now.

REDS, i have an infant puppy! running in and out of the house with her 100 times a day around the clock til she’s trained, or i drop dead, whichever comes first.

@SanFranLefty: Ah, Scully. Yes, another starlet of Exceptional Health. The worst presentation of twisted conceptions of beauty I’ve ever seen was a photo spread, fashion supplement feature, in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, in which the models were made up to look bruised and battered. Yeah, it was wife beating porn. Deeply evil stuff. I can still see a couple of the images and can’t imagine how it got by the photo editor much less been conceived by the photographer.

@JNOV: Sorry about horning in on the Stinque Up. No, no, not at all – I was the one who proposed it: Baked on break from hurricane season, Benedick and Blog down for food pron, engines and Sport, you, me, Ma and the biscuits, we’ll give Prom the Happy Happy Joy Joy fun in the sun weekend he’s been waiting all his life for. I propose the anniversary of Elvis’ death, or the closest weekend to that.

But the Cap’n (and his lovely first mate) has the final say.

@FlyingChainSaw: I’ll be the fourth to vote in extreme confidence for Scully as Exceptionally Healthy. But while we’re at it, can I get an “amen” for Dana Delaney?

Ugh. Now I’ve got Mike Rowe Ford ads. Betting the oil spill is considered a dirty job. ::wince::

@Nabisco: Cool. Cool.

@Nabisco: China Beach! She’s looking a little skinnish in her new show. Whateverthehellitscalled. Oh, and the Depp GF was Kate Crackhead Moss.

I think Ally McBeal is partly to blame for that fucking cracked out look. Lara Flynn Boyle – yikes! She had a little more meat on her in Twin Peaks. Portia DeRossi (sp?) and Lisa Lim (?) were uber tiny, too. Ally’s roommate, Lisa Nicole Carson, was the only average sized woman on the show, but I see she’s been starved and airbrushed into oblivion, except for the tatas. Then: http://img5.allocine.fr/acmedia/medias/nmedia/18/35/65/27/18448986.jpg Now: http://www.ally.cz/fotky/renee/rr011.jpg

@Nabisco: Elvis is not dead. Him and Tupac are living in a van down by the river.

@FlyingChainSaw:
i remember that photo spread, they were calling it ‘heroin chic’
the editor and photographer should be on some alert list.
sihk fucks.

@baked: Yep. They even did runway moddulls’ make up to give them dark circles under their eyes if they didn’t have them already.

@JNOV: I’ve got your guy Brrr in my latest copy of “Outside”. One of his kids names is something like “Camshaft”

@baked: how is the puppeh?? Send your editors more puppeh photos and we can put something happier than oily birds.
@Nabisco: Re: slouching as a tall girl – I don’t know how you can get her to not do it. I slouched for years in junior high and high school. It wasn’t until I started dating guys taller than me in college that I didn’t slouch. To this day, I have to consciously think about it so I *don’t* slouch. One of the biggest criticisms of Shelly O! on the fashion blogs is that she does the tall girl slouch all too often. Doing a lot of yoga has helped me learn how to not slouch, so if your bisqueta is already slouching at a young age because of her height, you might want to see if she wants to learn yoga or dance.

Flippin’ might have some thoughts on this, or Dodger as the father of tall daughters.

@baked: Right. It was the photographic equivalent of snuff porn. Anyone in the train of development and editing should have been canned and put on a do-not-hire list unless they were screaming up the chain of command that the paper was about to commit a crime against humanity. I mean what next? Murder and dismemberment chic? And the make-up was designed to simulate the bruises attendant savage battering of the face. Not only are these fuckers evil, they’re disingenuous fucking liars.

@Nabisco: @SanFranLefty: Even though I’m tall (5’10”), I had the advantage of growing up in a place chock-a-block with exceptionally tall people of Dutch heritage, and I always had at least a few peers who were my height or taller, both male and female. So even though I now find myself in situations occasionally where I feel like an Amazonian freak, I made it past the formative years without too much trauma. But like you pointed out Lefty, the temptation to stoop is always there, most often when someone’s taking a group picture or in a crowded bar, where I can’t hear a damn thing my 5’4” friends are saying.

@JNOV: Welcome back to the Book of Faces! Good timing to be away during the barrage of people freaking out about their nonexistent privacy settings. Please now assume every freaking person on the planet can see everything you post (which has been the case right from the beginning, more or less, they just did a better job of hiding that fact before).

@SanFranLefty: Sometimes I see her slump a bit, but not so much when she’s around friends. We refused to have her wait to enter school according to her cut-off age (post-September bisqueta) in part because she’s already taller than all the kids in her class, and she proved her maturity to start first grade early at the combine in kindergarten. She’s doing gymnastics and ka-ra-te, so if nothing else she’ll be able to kick future suitors’ asses (before I have to…).

@Nabisco: Was a sloucher, not sure why. Got over it sometime in high school when other kids pretty much caught up to me. Jr was a sloucher. I’m not sure why. He does that Shaggy walk.

@flippin eck: Right! FB thinks I’m 13, so I have some time to see how the privacy thing shakes out.

ADD: Thank you!

@Nabisco: Re the tall girl slouch–I had a grandmother who constantly corrected my posture (remember Babs Bush poking the twins in the back at the inauguration to make them stand up straight? my adolescence in a nutshell). Ballet does help with posture, but unless the biskette is naturally thin, as I was, it can be a breeding ground for anorexia. Yoga is probably a better, healthier choice. The other thing that was drilled into me is that standing out in the crowd is a good thing. However, in college, when I mostly dated shorter Jewish men, I had an impressive collection of Pappagallo flats.

@FlyingChainSaw: Glossed Over is a great blog (unfortunately not updated very often) that takes on the shallow, infantilizing, sexist, disempowering messages conveyed by women’s magazines and the fashion world in general. There was a post a while ago about death chic (aka shots of women in designer clothes sprawled out like homicide victims). Sick stuff.

@flippin eck: Jeepers, this is deeply sick stuff. I can’t believe they could actually get a magazine to run it. These people need to be kicked to death on pay-per-view. If they’re into this kind of shit, they should dig performance art.

@flippin eck:
Wow. Good work. This is the 1st time I’ve seen FCS recoil in disgust.

@flippin eck: Wow. The Jez had a piece on how some mags have to “reverse retouch” models to remove their jutting-out bones and soften the angles. Yikes.

@flippin eck: I don’t know what is more distressing, the concept of “death chic” or the implication that two house cats could have anything other than passionate disinterest in a skinny model. She wouldn’t have any food on her, and they certainly wouldn’t want to rub up against those skinny ankles.
@Mistress Cynica: I do ask her to sit up, but no poking. My folks were old school on posture, and I remember walking in classrooms with a book on my head. La Bisca is endearingly monstrous amongst her gymnastic cohort, I’m always slightly embarrassed when I drop by some of her classes and ID the future anorexics in the class.

@JNOV: Marmaduke and Huckleberry are two of them. Bear went to Eton, son of a PM, sister fed him an entire package of raw bacon at the age of 7, etc.

@Nabisco: Why are you doing this to me? Knew about political daddy and about the sweet life, but the kids’ names? Christ. Bears love huckleberries. They’re damned good. Marmaduke and Camshaft are beyond the pale. Maybe Benedick can explain this odd English behavior.

@JNOV: “Camshaft” was just a placeholder, sis. The third one has a more normal name, something like Jack or Audrey – I’m too sleepy to grab the article. I can see “Huck”, sure, but Marmaduke?

He came by “Bear” because his real name (something like “Theodore Aubrey Whiplash Grills III”) was nicked by his sis from “Teddy” to, obviously, “Bear”.

I do it because he’s still a stud, and you know it and love him for it. I just prefer “Survivorman” for the realism.

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