Yep, I'm playing the Arnold Palmer course on Monday for $19.00 (includes cart). This must be the sickest coupon/discount of all time. I'm looking forward to seeing this alleged internet coupon. But onto the real gulf...
In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov , Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years… many years.”
According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”[2] Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
I'm not even remotely qualified to discuss the BP catastrophe, but I have a strange hunch this Russian dude is spot on. I've been following the BP spill from more of a crisis management perspective. It seems like it's evolving into an indefinite problem. The manner in which BP attempts to solve the problem... one try after another. And then the government chimes in... one response after another. It just has this endless nuance. It seems the mainstream media is establishing this trend as well. They seem very reluctant to discuss the long term prospects. The more intriguing question is this - Let's assume the leak continues unabated. What will knock this tragedy out of the regular news cycle? In Nigeria, they've had roughly the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill EVERY year for the past 4 decades or so. But this ain't Nigeria.
Remember how BP tried to reshape their image with the whole "Beyond Petroleum" marketing campaign a year ago. In retrospect, it appears that was a colossal waste of money. Eventually, they'll have to remove the Tony Hayward CEO with the smarmy British accent. Could this douchebag be getting any worse advice from his handlers? He skips back across the pond to watch a yacht race? What the fuck?
But as long as they have underwater cameras trained on that hole, this company is fucked. Once again, what would it take to push the story out of the headlines... An Obama assassination, another Bill Clinton sex scandal, an earthquake devastates San Fransisco. Well, here's something that what would work - my Superbowl 9/11 follow-up terrorist attack prediction. But taking into account the fickle American appetite for what constitutes news, I have a hard time fathoming that the BP spill will still be front page headlines 6 months from now.
I've been trying to formulate an idea that will get BP out of the news cycle. To be honest, there's really not much they can do. They need another catastrophe to steal the spotlight. That's their only hope in the near term. Or just hope the typical American grows tired and weary from the endless coverage. This could prove nearly impossible though as long as those tar balls keep popping up. Houston, TX, Cape Cod, Atlantic City > this could get a lot worse. Every week, it's a new city that gets hit. Sure puts a dent in that notion of exquisite beachfront property. All of a sudden, the "wood" towns (Benwood, Warwood, etc.) don't sound so bad. And that summer trip to Barcamp with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken... I haven't had KFC in over a year. It sounds a bit compelling but that one on Wheeling Island is really dirty. High concentrations of gnats on the inside, a dense covering of soot on the outside.
But when it comes to oil, BP's got nothing on Star Trek. I'm recalling a horrible Star Trek Next Generation episode where that tar/oil monster consumes chief security officer Tasha Yar. I'm a huge fan of Jean Luc and his crew, but those first and second seasons were SO horrifically abysmal. The writing, the acting, the directing... It amazes me that the network didn't squash the show. What's harder to fathom - how on earth did it suddenly become so much better? Remember the Binars? Those bald computerized midget dudes that would complete each others sentences? How about the stunning empathic powers of Deanna Troy - she would really strut her shit. "Captain, he appears frightened." "Commander, he's lying." And I love how back in the early episodes, Wesley Crusher (the naive youngster) would always manage to save the Enterprise. I saw him on a talk show about a decade ago. He really turned into an arrogant fuck. At least that's how he came across.
Back to the British Petroleum fiasco. Aside from the my Superbowl timed theory , you could orchestrate a man made catastrophe during the other biggest televised event, the grandaddy of them all - The World Cup final in mid July. Not sure of the form it would take though. Multiple suicide bombings in Baghdad ain't going to cut it.
1 comment:
As a long time employee of the media I can tell you that the media always has to beat one thing to death until the next thing comes along. If there is nothing big going on they make something small into a huge deal. Our local stations treat a light snow like an alien invasion because nothing else is happening here. H1N1 was all the rage last year and not all that many people died from it. What ever happened to West Nile Virus? In the late 90's they spent an entire summer panicking about shark attacks, the "Summer of the shark." Someone found out that a few years earlier there had been like three times as many shark attacks and we never heard about it...because it was during the time of the OJ trial. Something will naturally come up and take the spotlight off of the oil spill. It always does.
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