The Day The Earth Farted, The World Stood Still …or… Deepwater Is In Deep Doo-Doo!
What’s a fart anyway? A tiny bubble of trapped gas that works its way to the surface, much to everyone’s chagrin. What’s a Deepwater Horizon Explosion, but a tiny bubble of methane trapped down in the undersea bowels of the Earth, which one day, silently and unexpectedly worked its way through a slender BP drilling pipe; expanded into an ever-more-deadly bubble, and caused a ka-boom heard ’round the world.
“Oh, goodness gracious me! That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
Sometimes, it’s just too obvious to deny who’s the guilty party. All the fanning motions in the world won’t absolve the source of the toot if the guilty party stands alone in the big round room. All eyes turn to stare, all cameras begin to whir and the internet has a field day. Silence falls. Nothing can be heard except the booms that continue to emerge from an unrepentant and unaccountable derriere.
The hostess swishes out the room spray. To no avail.
The proper Britisher, so suave just yesterday, blushes in the awful limelight. Mumbling apologies, he scans the exits; wishes someone else would have a worse misfortune at just that moment; empties pockets to soothe troubled dancers suddenly too shocked to have fun.
One tourist-filled archipelago along an earthquake-shattered fault line would do just fine! Would swing the public mindset onto rescue vehicles as neatly as a dancer’s double hip fracture during a particularly vigorous swing dance would take attention back where it belongs. On someone else!
But, drat it all, the music has stopped. Revelers stand in utter silence, joining “hands across the sand” in sudden photogenic protest by water sites around the world. Such staring! It goes on and on….wanting explanation….prying into private life and prandial secrets… requests for logs of former incidents, movements and preventive measures, as well as unborn future bubbles and potential noisy embarrassments. What is any gentleman to do under these grave circumstances? Look serious and wipe the brow; promise amends, fervently wish for yesterday, and think of happy thoughts. Sailing, for instance.
And yet, the nightmare becomes ever more sticky and inescapable. One can’t swear off the guilty substance. One wants One’s petroleum jelly!
Speaking as if to a congress of souls, by way of explanation, the poor fellow summons heartfelt words, thinking of what The Crown would say in this case:
“They say One’s sea cows are mad… Nonsense! They say One’s drilling is diabolical! It looks just fine to Me! But there’s one thing they’re bang-on about: One wants One’s BBP!”
Shall I drill for you, Sir? Quite!”
The dancers too, are addicts all. Their pockets are deeply lined with the goo, yet they insist upon their public inquisition.
“What caused your dreadful Toot?” they all say, interminably. “Is it likely to happen again? We surely think it will! You must guarantee a certifiably failsafe gut, before we invite you to our parties again. And when, oh when, will this one stop? And what about our dividends?”
He answers meekly, “The doctors say it’s a bad case of gas. Or perhaps a case of bad gas. Too soon to tell. We’re running tests, you know. But, certainly it’s over. I have a lot of experts working on it. It’s an isolated incident. So sorry. My apologies for spoiling your party. I’ll just be toddling off right now. The check will be in the mail tomorrow for all the grief this caused.”
Truth to tell, no party guest wants his own supply line cut. Nor prices raised again! Nor jobs lost. So, they all lobby amongst themselves for more offshore drilling… “But under better supervision.” These Dixieland Scarlett O’Haras simply want the music and the dancing to continue, and will worry about such uncouth civil nuances tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the current media darling hobbles home, praying for some natural disaster in a mountain fastness across the globe to distract the fickle public. Anything will do….except a hurricane … say, a gift from Alexander, The Great. He shudders at the wind-related jokes to come of that and the fun that upstart bloggers would again have at his expense.
(If you liked this post, you’ll love In Secret Diffusion: The Upper Realm Answers Questions About Earth, by Linda J. Brown, soon to be available in all locations.)
Tags: 1, BP, Dancing around the oil rig, Deepwater is in deep doo-doo, Scarlett O'Hara is a Gas Guzzler, Will the oil spill be gone with the wind?, Tag Index
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