Cleaning Up the Mess

Golf balls and trash can stop the oil in the Gulf? Really?

Is that a solution worthy of a company that posted a $14 billion profit in 2009? But then, as one executive exclaimed, "they had no idea that such a disaster could occur."

Let's start there. Hmmmm.... ....drilling for highly toxic, highly pressurized substances mixed with highly volatile combustible gas all several miles under ground which is a mile under water off a floating platform - and no one thought that anything bad could ever happen? Forgive us slack-jawed masses... ...after all these years of off shore drilling, has no one in the oil industry invested any of that fat cash whatsoever in disaster mitigation? Last month's disaster was fully preventable, or at least mitigateable. What a lesson in project planning! Oh yeah - drill baby drill!

But let me not rant. The disaster occurred. Let me offer some solutions, and aren't these at least as good as the wacky ones already attempted?

-BP could pay to open a factory in the US that makes plush animals. Air drop thousands of these stuffed animals on the oil spill. They will soak up the oil and eventually land ashore. Then oil industry and Wall Street executives could volunteer their time to wash them off. Once clean and pretty, donate the plush animals to childrens charity. What a job-growing economic stimulus package!

-Congress could set up an online gambling site which would allow people to gamble on when and where the slick will come ashore. Use proceeds to aid cleanup and repair the economic damage.

-Giant cotton balls soak up the slick. Scoop them up, and dump them on BP headquarters. I'm sure they'd eventually find a good use for them. They'd probably box them up as campfire fuel and call them "gulf balls."

-Vinegar. Lots of vinegar!

-Fill three giant tanker ships with dishwashing soap. Then offer the US Navy free target practice.

-Build a lava lamp factory.

-Plug the holes with golf balls! And garbage! Oh, wait... ...we already tried that.

Please, gulf residents, forgive my dry humor. I'm merely pointing out how absurd it is that after all the "drill baby drill" advocates out there, they and we don't have any solutions more viable than any of the aforementioned to such (an ultimately inevitible) mess. What frustration. I can't imagine how you must feel.

Plug this hole! Let's find some way to clean up this horrible mess we've made for ourselves.