Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Oil be seeing you

The oil companies that are trying to dodge responsibility over the oil rig that blew up in the gulf are really making my slapping hand itchy. I live in Texas. And they screwed up my shore line. One, I love the beach. Two, I love shrimp. Three, I don’t need a three, because one and two are plenty enough. Your dog may poop on my yard, but you damn well better have a baggy handy to pick up the mess.

And if you’ve never been on a beach that’s been suffering from the effects of an oil spill, it is truly a mess. In a word, disgusting. First comes the smell. It really is an unholy, pits of hell smell. Then there’s the dead or in-need-of-rescue wildlife. But the real long-lasting annoyance for anyone who wants to go to the beach is the tar balls. They are these nasty, molasses-brown goo blobs that wash up on shore. If one comes into contact with your skin, they smear on. And won’t come off. You’re going to scrub your skin raw getting clean. And if you sit on one, kiss your bathing suit good-bye. Otherwise you’re going to be walking around looking like you somehow got the skid marks on the outside of your drawers.

All that means you have blown your beach tourism for the duration. Until somebody cleans up. And apparently, the guilty parties are too busy deflecting to pick up a mop. Because they don’t make enough money pumping oil to cover their cleaning tab. I’ve lost all kinds of respect for BP over this one, in particular. They’re all about the environment, until they spill oil all over it. Whoopsie. Somebody else’s problem. Exxon, you kind of expect this crap out of. Frankly, if the Obama administration holds BP’s feet to the flames over this one, they’ll finally have won me over. Big oil may be able to get away with fouling the landscape in some banana republic. But I’d kind of like to think they can’t get away with whizzing on our doorstep.

2 comments:

WashingtonGardener said...

BP AND Halliburton (aka Dick Cheney) should acknowledge their responsibility, cap it, clean it then reinburse all the lost biz the cost.

FirePhrase said...

That's the minimum they should do. Even better would be if they'd just man up and do it without kicking and whining like a bunch of spoiled children. I'm just thoroughly over businesses who want high stakes profits without high stakes risks. Somehow they came to believe in easy money.

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