Three Dollars Ten?

Apparently we were off about 500% regarding the quantity of oil being injected into the Gulf of Mexico from the uncapped wellhead left exposed from the blowout from the Deepwater Horizon. Somehow they are able to measure the quantity of leakage from five thousand feet below the surface of the ocean. We can measure it but we can't stop it.

Mass paranoia regarding it being worse than the Valdez, however. That's simply the bias in reporting. While it yet may be worse, yes, it's way too early to assume that. It might be stopped tomorrow for all we know -- there are an awful lot of intelligent people working on this and their efforts have never been more needed than now...their future depends on getting this thing fixed, and they will.

It'll be capped, the seagulls will continue to fly, shrimpers will continue to shrimp, and we'll forget all about this little incident in five months' time.

Think to yourself. Have you ever once heard of any offshore blowout in Nigeria? Nope, not here in Elk Grove. Elk Grovians could care less about what happens in African oil exporting nations...so long as oil is timely and cheaply delivered to our gasoline stations from wherever. The blowout of the #5 Funiwa well off the Nigerian coast, which leaked eight million four hundred thousand gallons of oil (ninety times what the Deepwater Horizon has already), has never entered into the collective minds of our Elk Grovians. Never. Not once.

Funiwa? Only 200,000 barrels into the ocean. A totally insignificant volume against U.S consumption of 19,500,000 barrels each day. We are leaking, at most, 5,000 barrels each day from this latest explosion, which represents 0.026% of our daily consumption. Three one hundredths of one percent.

This is insignificant. We ignore it. Because gas won't rise in price due to this event, we'll just wink and nod it off and go about our business and continue to perpetually motor about. It's Friday, and a non-furlough Friday at that -- off to our relatives' housal units in the Bay Area; out fishing in the delta; camping in Yosemite, dinner in Walnut Creek; shopping at the Galleria; gambling in Placerville at Red Hawk (kree-eh-ahhh). Couldn't hardly give a shit about some poor schlubs in Mississippi trying to shrimp. They are lower class , uneducated people, anyway, and shrimp today is cheap enough because we import 80% of all shrimp from Vietnam and Laos - All I want is cheap shrimp, and I'm gonna get cheap shrimp regardless of all those shrimpers in Louisiana who charge outrageous prices for their catch. Besides, Elk Grove is higher society, and as such it is much more important for us to recreationally use oil than concern ourselves with other lesser people's incessant, bothersome bitching about a little oil on their coastline or in their fisheries. All that oil that washes ashore in Louisiana is free. Free! Didn't cost them a cent! They get it for free, while out here in California we have to pay three dollars ten! Tell me who's really suffering here...it's us, paying so goddamn much, sheesh. Californians are the one's who are really suffering, you know.

Three dollars ten?