Fire water

A scene from Josh Fox's Gasland, a documentary on the natural gas industry, hydraulic fracturing/"Fracking", contamination of the water table, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, dead animals, illness, the environment, the EPA, and dangerous chemicals.

It debuted on HBO last night and was a horrifying look into how the natural gas industry's complete exemption from any and all environmental laws and the expansion of drilling all over the country has lead to increased water contamination and illness amongst the people living nearby. Of course the natural gas companies deny this is happening, that the hundreds of dangerous chemicals they pump into the ground in a process called hydraulic fracturing can't possibly be harming anyone, and how no one is essentially keeping an eye on this. It kind of makes you sick as you watch it over the nearly two hour running time of the film.

So, watch it or DVR it if you have a chance. Here's an interview with the director on PBS. Here's the trailer.

Your horrifying oil related story of the day

Turtle fire.

Stay classy, Mark

Did you know that they're going to build a mosque in New York somewhere in the vicinity of Ground Zero? If not, I'm sure the imminent shrieking and gnashing of teeth over this obvious tragedy will be forthcoming from all the requisite crazies who don't live in New York. Until such a time as those parties have stopped being distracted by financial reform, primaries, that goddamn stripper Muslim who stoled the durn Miss USA crown, shiny object, bright flashing lights, and our Kenyan President's socialism, we'll just have to deal with the wailing outrage of the the kooks who really hate everything brown, swarthy, and of or pertaining to the prophet Muhammad.

So it is with that in mind that the first shriek was thrown down from Tea Party Express chairman ('natch) and conservative talk radio host ('natch) Mark Williams. He went for the gusto and threw down The Umbrage and The Taking of Offense so thick that I think he's trying to set the record for "Petulant Reactionary Xenophobic Racism". He isn't going to need a second attempt.

The animals of allah for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslims who hijacked those 4 airliners.

The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god and a "cultural center" to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.

Mark closed by proffering an explanation from his book as to why Islam attracted so many mental patients and closed it out with a picture of Muhammad with a swastika on his head.

I don't usually like to guess where Jesus would come down on an issue, but I think Mark phrased it exactly as the Lord would. Although Jesus would have said it through gritted teeth as He lit a stogie of the end of His flamethrower. Then He would have yelled something about "You blasphemous maggots! Reduce me to a prophet, will you!" before turning His flamethrower on full blast and going to town on the Masjid al-Haram as He cackled like a madman.

Boy, I'm sure this will do wonders for the Tea Party's reputation. Way to keep it classy, Mark. I'm sure the city of New York is glad you're looking out for them in the most cheaply racist/hot, spittle flecked screaming/hatefully insane kind of way. They're probably so grateful that they'll forgive you when you invite some attack or natural disaster on the city for some perceived liberal or anti-Jesus transgression.

Drill, baby, drill --> Burn, baby, burn

Don't worry citizens. You know the giant oil slick that's menacing the Gulf and threatening coastlines and marine life? There's a solution. They're just going it light it on fire and burn away the oil. Seriously.

The US coastguard is to set fire to oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico to prevent the slick from reaching shore after last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Robot submarines have so far failed to shut off the flow more than 1,500 metres below where the Deepwater Horizon was wrecked. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead, and the cause of the explosion 50 miles off Louisiana has not been determined.

A coastguard spokesman said the burn would begin today. Prentice Danner said fire-resistant booms would be used to corral some of the thickest oil on the surface, which would then be ignited. It was unclear how large an area would be set on fire or how far from shore the fire would be set.

Think of it as less "world's largest ecological disaster" and more "world's largest fish fry". I just think of the tremendous boon this will be to the newspaper industry. They gotta wrap those fish in something. A little investment advice: tartar sauce future are about to go through the roof.

This tactic was employed in Newfoundland in 1993 and ended up burning off half of the oil that had been spilled in an event that in no way make anyone anywhere concerned about the environmental hazards of offshore drilling. Let it be said that there is no ecological problem that cannot be solved by fire.

Picture of the day

As the world is still a depressing, depressing place, it is our duty to bring you happiness through primitive means. By which we mean... FIRE!!!!! Thankfully the Big Picture blog is here to inform us of the status of two fire festivals that are ongoing, the Scottish based Viking fire festival of Up Helly Aa and the Spanish based fire and horse centered Feast of Saint Anthony the Great.

We eat the pig and together we burn! Burn!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.30

How much did Tiger Woods cost shareholders?
We all know what Tiger Woods' appetite for incredibly trashy bar skanks costs him: his status as the most ungodly boring athlete on the face of the planet, a perfectly good set of golf clubs that is now dented and covered in car paint, a car, and a number of endorsements. I heard John Daly walked up to Tiger and told him that he "really needed to pull himself together" because he was "acting reckless and damaging his reputation." There is no lower indignity. But what's happeneing to all the companies that hitched their wagon to the seemingly unstoppably mundane juggernaut known as the Tiger Woods marketing persona? They lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-12 billion in stock value. Ouch. Well at least Tiget got to sleep with some real classy ladies. I'm sure that's of real comfort to EA, Nike, and Gatorade stockholders.

How Algal Biofuels Lost a Decade in the Race to Replace Oil
Wired Science looks at how one of the best sources for biofuels, algae, got started and eventually fell by the funding wayside in the transition from Carter's alternate fuels programs to Reagan's OILOILOIL and tongue kissing Saddam programs. On the negative side, we lost decades worth of research into a very promising field. On the bright side, the recent stimulus package and increase in science funding has pumped money back into algae biofuel. The downside? That money is going to run out in a few years. If only we could get some way to turn algae into corn, there would probably be more support for the initiative.

Barley + Space = Space Beer!
Space beer. Do I actually have to say a third word? Fine, Japan (could it have been anyone else) sent up barley grains that spent 5 months on the International Space Station. Now, Sapporo is making 250 six packs and selling them through a lottery for $150. The money raised is going to fund science education. It should be used to fund more space beer. Is These Bastards the only ones who sees the possibility: moon water + space barley = zero G brain lubricant. Let's get on top of this shit Sapporo, if I can't actually visit a moon base, I want to be albe to get 3 sheets to the wind on space beer. Chop chop. Make it happen.

Star Wars Weather Forecast
I know what you're all thinking: what planet in the Star Wars galaxy does the weather outside most resemble? Well now, thanks to Tom Scott, you don't have to wonder. Just type in your zip code or city name and you'll know. It also helps you learn the Star Wars planet names if you're one of those uncultured swine who can't rattle off 40-50 imaginary planets in some macho display of nerd intelligence and misspent youth.

Not again! Giant Swedish Christmas goat statue gets torched
The good people of Stockholm are trying to create a Christmas tradition for their city: building a giant straw statue of a Yule goat, the Swedish precursor to God's son and the savior of man, Santa Claus. Unfortunately, Stockholm hooligans, most likely named Lars or Henrik, have decided upon their own Christmas tradition: evading the security surrounding the giant straw goat in order to set it ablaze. Guess which tradition is winning out? Fire trumps all.

Broken In Brief: Black Eyed Peas spend 10 whole minutes writing new hit

LOS ANGELES—“Yeah, so I’m gonna be all like, ‘We’re gonna rock it, rock it. We’re gonna rock it, rock it. We’re gonna rock it tonight.’ And I’m gonna repeat that like forty or fifty times. Understand?” said Black Eyed Peas member and producer will.i.am during the band’s marathon 10-minute writing session for their upcoming #1 hit We’re Gonna Rock It.

It is this very commitment to the craft of songwriting that has the band’s label, Interscope, privately excited that this might be the track that gets used in every single commercial and montage during the fall and winter months, as opposed to merely most of them.

“Yeah it’s got this great beat. ‘Du-dum-dum-dum, da-dum-dum-dum-dada-dumdumdum’ and it repeats it over and over and over and over again, at least a couple hundred times. I don’t know, I’m not a mathematician,” said an excited Jimmy Iovine, Chairman of Interscope. “And just when you think it’s about to drive you insane and sap your will to live, they double-time it and Fergie starts singing, ‘We’re rockin’ it, rockin’ it, rockin’ it, rockin’ it’ and those two other guys… shit, I don’t know what they do. I guess they’ll be dancing in the video and going ‘Yeah’ and ‘Huh’ on the backing track. Anyway, it’s going to make everything Bob Dylan did sound like a Raffi tape.”

The 10 minutes spent on this new song eclipses the previous 8-minute record the band spent writing Boom Boom Pow. To be fair, this total also included recording time. Most credit this new focus and dedication to the realization within the group that painting by numbers simply wasn’t enough, that they needed to spend time making sure the colors were right and put carefully into their designated spaces.

“Yeah, it’s about art and shit,” said will.i.am from atop his giant pile of cash. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go rap about how hard I’m rockin’ it. I’m counting this interview as part of the writing time.”

Pictures of the day

From the Big Picture blog: California being turned into a fiery inferno. I hope it didn't burn any of the stuff Schwarzenegger put out for the governmental yard sale he had to organize to fix the budget.

That's one solution

Egypt MPs seek 'immediate death' for nation's pigs

Egypt's lower house of parliament called on Tuesday for the nation's 250,000 pigs to be killed immediately because of fears over the spread of swine flu, state news agency MENA reported.

"The People's Assembly urged the government to immediately start culling pigs and not to relocate pig-breeding farms away from residential areas for fear of the spread of swine flu," MENA said.

Egypt's 80-million population consists mainly of Muslims, whose religion forbids them from eating pork, as well as an estimated six to 10 percent Christian Copts who may eat pig meat.

Yeah, I guess that's one way to 'solve' everything. Except that the disease already jumped over to humans if in fact pigs are to blame. The problem already happened and now it's humans carrying the disease that are the ones who spread it. Banning travel to/from countries already in the throes of the flupocalypse would be preferable to pig genocide.

But seriously, how hard are Muslim countries laughing now? First capitalism bent us over and went through our pockets, now our love of bacon and pork chop sandwiches will catch us all our mucousy death. They've been warning about pigs for years. No swine for breakfast, no swine on their cheeseburgers, no bacon bits in their hummus, no huge factory pig farms, no swine flu. Live and learn, I guess. Or learn and then quickly die of the swine flu, as the case may be.

Culture under siege

The ritual in action*. R.I.P.

From the blog Pittsburgh Dish comes terrible news about Oakland high class, college livin'. No longer will residents of cheaply made tenement shacks be able to lounge on their porches on a couch they stole from a garbage pile. No loner will the students of Pittsburgh's numerous fine higher learning institutions (and Duquesne) be able to use said couch as fuel in a celebratory fire over a sporting victory, the end of finals, or as the clear flammable solution to a whisky fueled rage at sitting implements. And why is this? Well, because of the fire thing. And lucrative fines! And spite!

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl will sign legislation banning couches from porches, his office said yesterday, after City Council gave its unanimous final approval to Councilman Bruce Kraus' ordinance.

Upon the mayor's signature, the presence of a couch, mattress, box spring or upholstered chair on an unenclosed porch could bring a fine of $200 to $500 per day, plus court costs.
...
Council also was motivated by the celebratory burning of couches that accompanies some Oakland street festivals and follows big sports wins.

"Hopefully, this will help out, but it's still a lot of education that's going to happen" before such behavior stops, said Ms. Payne.

Et tu, boy mayor? Must you treat us like lowly Morgantown dwellers? I'll bet this solves everything. No more fires. Nothing else in Oakland is flammable.

An era is ending. No more sitting on the porch discussing literature getting shit faced and skipping class. Now people will have to steal lawn furniture or milk crates and sit on those. They will have to defend and protect these new sitting implements from theft. This flies in the face of the whole dirty porch couch concept: that no one in their right mind would ever try to steal one.

So a heartfelt farewell to all the dirty porch couches in my life, you were there when I needed to sit down outside, avoid a beagle, recover from a hangover, and yell shit at passers by. Although I now regret ever allowing my skin to touch you, that meant something. In an ideal world we'd pile all of you up in the street and set you on fire, a fitting tribute and final sendoff, but that would anger our child mayor. Fare thee well, dirty porch couch, fare thee well.

*picture by noted photojournalist Nathaniel Minto
The last name has been redacted to protect his identity

Buy two

Out now: the Sarah Palin comic. It's about a mild mannered woman who, while out one day strolling the Alaska/Russia border, is hit by a truck full of radioactive bibles and seal pelts and is forever transformed into Hockey Mom, defender of the tundra.

See her rise to the ranks of governor and be transfixed as her evil archenemies in the media use her one weakness, questions, against her when she tries to bring her frontier justice to the lower 48. But she struggles on to return back to her icy fortress to do battle against those rotten fucking kids of Alaska and the teachers who enable them.

$3.99. Written by Garth Ennis. Art by Ben Templesmith.

This changes nothing

Remember last month when we formally issued articles outlining a Declaration of Hate on the Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) support group? While the entire sordid enterprise absolutely reeked of scam, we dove headfirst into the hatefest because, well, this is New York and the notion was not the least bit far-fetched. Turns out the Times done been had.

Editors' Note: February 25, 2009
An article on Jan. 28 about women who commiserated over dating Wall Street bankers caught in the financial crisis described a group they had formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, as a support group. That is the name of their blog. Its creators originally told The Times that about 30 women had participated, but since publication, they have said that all involved were friends. Laney Crowell, one of the women who started the blog, said in the article that it was “very tongue in cheek;” she has since described it as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.

So it's not a "support group," per se, but rather a blog that "embellishes true experiences." Fuck that. The hate remains. This city becomes more tolerable every time one of these people loses his or her job and has to move the hell out. TB will run no correction, no retraction. Only more hate. Hate hate hate.

....from the heart of the maelstrom

from TB photojournalist correspondent Nathaniel "Last name redacted to protect his identity", comes a photo reconstruction of Oakland in the moments after the Steelers captured #6. For those of you keeping track at home, that's in front of Posvar Hall and the Pitt Student Union, right by the Cathedral of Learning. Cops everywhere, fire everywhere, horses, fire trucks, masses of humanity, open container laws being violated everywhere, helicopters buzzing around, it felt like everyone had just committed a crime on Grand Theft Auto and the police alert level was 3 stars at least.

The new mayor of Oakland


Spoils of war


Former trees surrounding the Cathedral of Learning, they were sacrificed for the greater good.






The Mayor, explaining the new order of life in our Steelerocracy.

Today's reason to hate life

According to Fashionista, the DABA harpies I discovered earlier now have a book deal.

To quote the Zen philosopher, David Della Rocco, "Fuckin', what the fuckin', fuck, who the fuck, fuck this fucking, how did you two fucking fucks... FUCK!"

I demand an apology on behalf of the female gender

If you happen to be in the mood for a little "Well, at least I'm not like that" pick-me-up, look no further than yesterday's NYTimes piece on the latest group to be hit hard by our collective financial ruin: vapid materialistic whores banker's girlfriends. Apparently, when times are tough and the legalized prostitution well runs dry, these soulless harpies have nowhere to turn but their favorite $27 martini bar.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

I have to hand it to Ravi Somaiya for writing the piece with what appears to be a straight face. Honestly, a couple of dick jokes or a Fritz Haber reference and this is Broken News.

Once you've successfully choked back the bile from the Times article, be sure to head over to the Dating a Banker Anonymous blog, where you can enjoy the metaphysical musings of fine citizens like Courtney, who when not trolling Battery Park gin joints for an AMEX with a penis attached, busies herself by ruining marriages.

Suddenly, I found myself being taken out less and less frequently. A recent argument went along these lines:

Me *pouting*: You haven’t taken me on a trip since we went to Bermuda in September. What’s going on?

Charles: Honey, finances are tight right now so my wife has taken it upon herself to check up on all of our accounts. She will notice any big expenditures.

Me *cute voice*: Wellllllllllllll, what are you going to do to make it up to me?

Charles: Can we talk later sweetheart? I’m really busy right now.

Me: No. Give me an answer NOW. Don’t you realize what you have? I’m way too hot to be treated like this. (Disclaimer: Yes, I come across as bratty here, but it typically works when trying to get something out of him)

Charles *yelling for the first time in our almost two-year relationship*: I’VE GOT TO FIRE TWENTY PEOPLE BY THE END OF THE WEEK. Z has four kids, X just had a baby girl, Y just sent his son to college and I’ve got to get rid of two of those guys… and you’re complaining about vacations and dinner? God, you are so 24! GROW UP!

Me *stunned*: Okie dokie, let’s talk later lover.

And the rockets' red glaaaaare...