Tag: death

Capitalism causes cancer,

both the kind you’re thinking of,

and another kind:

cities.

Cities are tumors on the Earth,

our precious home planet.

I originally was going to write about the new Dark Shadows motion picture, but circumstances have intervened.  It turns out that my dear friend’s mum’s twin brother died either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, alone except for his little dog.  My friend called me around 9:30 Thursday morning to go next door and try to comfort her mum, and I was honored to do so.

Her mum was a basket case.  She and her brother were Christmas Day babies, 65 years ago Christmas past.  I have a brother, but not a twin, and my brother and I are separated by 14 years.  She and her brother were separated by fewer than 14 minutes, so they grew up together.

I did comfort her, and she cried in my arms.  I could not do much except to try to let her know that I really care, and she appreciated that.  Now for the culture part.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

The earthquake and the tsunami and the nuclear event have finally shut me up.  I haven’t been able to write. I don’t have anything clear or witty or insightful or clever or new to say about these events.  I am avoiding the talking heads on TV, and I’m reading as little as possible about the event on the Internet, and I’ve been absent from this blog. Why? Because I have no confidence at all that what I’d hear or read would be the truth. And I have the dreadful thought that the situation in Japan is far, far worse than what we are being told. I have no proof for the last sentence other than the plethora of contradictions I find in the news stories. And a tight feeling in my heart and chest and stomach that warns of impending, large scale disaster. I hope I’m wrong about this, but alas, I don’t think I am.

Tonight Eastern Standard Time will begin.  Again.  And that, around here, is the dreaded beginning of horrible Winter.  This, after all, is Upstate New York.  I’m nestled against the Massachusetts border.  And the beginning of Eastern Standard Time fills me with utter dread.

What stands between me and actual, below zero winter?  First, deer hunting season.  A very few hunters, fewer by far than a decade ago, will stagger drunkenly into the woods before dawn and send the grotesquely overpopulated deer into an unparalleled panic and frenzy.  They’re already crazy because they’re in rut.  The deer will then run into the roads and into cars.  Why don’t they avoid the cars?  Two reasons: first, they think the roads are made of ice, so they’re afraid of running on them.  And second, there really is a  reason for the phrase “a deer in the headlights.”  This doesn’t begin explain why deer run into the sides of passing cars.  And it doesn’t explain why the shoulders of all of the roads are filled with deer eyes reflecting headlights and waiting for an unfortunate moment to run into the road.

I sighed uneasy relief with everyone else when BP finally stopped Deepwater Horizon from emptying itself in the Gulf.  Yes, I knew it was temporary.  Yes, I knew it could blow up again any minute.  But there was, nevertheless, a relief.  For a short time anyway, BP would stop turning the Gulf of Mexico into a disgusting oil gumbo garnished with oil soaked pelicans and dead dolphins.

But then I read this article in the New York Times:

A wellhead in southeastern Louisiana was spewing a mist of oil and gas up to 100 feet into the air after being hit by a tug boat early Tuesday morning, officials said. It is at least the third unrelated oil leak in the area since the Deepwater Horizon spill began 99 days earlier.

The well is about 65 miles south of New Orleans in Barataria Bay, which is surrounded by wildlife-rich wetlands and was a fertile area for fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen before the BP spill. By Tuesday afternoon, a reddish brown sheen 50 yards by one mile long was spotted near the well, according to a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said the well was owned by Cedyco, a company based in Houston.

The wellhead burst at 1 a.m. local time Tuesday after being hit by a tug boat, the Pere Ana C, that was pushing a dredge barge, Captain Buford Berry, though details were still being investigated.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, there is more oil and gas being deposited in the Gulf as you read this.  And they haven’t started stopping it yet, and are booming.  Booming.  Booming with 6000 feet of boom.  Pardon me, but didn’t we all decide in the past 3 months that that is worthless.  Oh, but excuse me again, this is a new day.  And a new leak.  And so we get to try stuff that didn’t work before all over again.  Because we’re crazy and think it’ll be different this time.

And then we have this gem:

No specific flow rate has been determined, officials said.

Mama mia.  Oy gevalt.

And this, dear reader, is why I find myself shrieking.  And uttering strings of profanity.  Join me.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles and docuDharma and dailyKos