Explore Posterous

Just Because Australians Are Drunk a Lot Doesn't Mean They Can't Drill Offshore for Oil

Oil Rig Fire, Timor Sea

In case you haven't heard, there's an oil rig on fire in the Timor Sea:

An oil spill disaster that could rival the impact of the Exxon Valdez is playing out tonight off the coast of Australia. For 10 weeks, a crippled deep-water oil rig has been leaking millions of gallons into the ocean between Australia's northwest coast and the islands of Indonesia.

It is bringing to light the possible environmental impact when offshore drilling goes wrong, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

With explosive gas spewing into the air and thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the water each day the spill began claiming sea snakes, birds and dolphins.

The blowout is thought to have been caused by a fracture in a pipe 8,000 feet beneath the sea floor. Again and again over two months the Thailand-based company that owns the rig tried and failed to plug the well.

"We remain committed and resolved to achieve our goal," said Jose Martins, chief financial officer of the company, Pttep Oil. "That may require a few more attempts."

Just how much has spilled is uncertain. Environmental groups say satellite photos show its spread across more than 9,000 square miles and estimate some 9 million gallons have poured into the ocean - nearly as much as the 11 million gallons that escaped from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

While there may be some use of this symbolic image to try to slow down offshore drilling, you have to remember that the defenders of offshore drilling are going to attack this issue in several different ways. First, they may point out that the state of the art technology used by the oil rig is different from the state of the art technology we might be using off the coast of Florida or Texas. Second, they may point to it as an isolated incident, blown up out of proportion to how safe and reliable offshore drilling really is. Third, there is always the fact that oil and natural gas has always leaked into the ocean naturally, through deep fissures in the ocean floor. Even though I'm not a geologist, and I have never had occasion to pretend to be one to get a government loan, I do know that you can certainly fudge the amount of oil that it is possible to extract from a site. That might be another argument against banning or slowing down the expansion of offshore drilling.

Then there is an entirely different angle that I am afraid they might use, and that's the angle nearly everyone uses to attack anything Australian, and that's the "drunk Aussie" angle. This is so wrong, I hesitate to bring it up. The image of smash-drunk Aussies, dancing around a neglected bonfire, shooting guns and throwing fat girls into the ocean springs to mind.

Let's be brutally honest--the Australians are a bunch of drunken louts. They're not as bad as the Russians, but, bear in mind, a lot of Russians emigrate to Australian because their livers can't take the vodka anymore, and they move on to that weak Australian beer they serve down there. There's a term for this type of individual by the way, and it's "yabbo." When you think of a drunken Australian, dropping his freshly-trimmed short pants and howling into a rolled up sheet of aluminum like it is a ten dollar megaphone, think of the hateful implications of assuming that a rollicking yabbo party on the main deck of the oil rig, complete with Radio Birdman songs and sex dolls cavorting with wallabies, caused this disaster. Don't give in to the hate. Incompetence is a disease, and, brother, that disease has taken hold in Australia.

Barman kid

What does your beer say about you?

Cool story from Advertising Age about market research into how your choice of beer correlates to your personality. And don't say, "I don't drink beer." That makes you 50 percent more likely to be a Republican, according to the research. And 100 percent more likely to be the least fun person in the room, according to vast anecdotal evidence.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=140106

The story only presents a few findings from a larger study, but let's look at some generalizations:

My lovely wife, the Michelob Ultra drinker (in fairness, chosen because it's the cheapest light beer at Costco):

Michelob Ultra drinkers rate high in superiority; that is, they think highly of themselves and can be a little bit conceited. They care what other people think about them and want to appear perfect. They also tend to be take-charge types with strong opinions, and can even be confrontational. 

And me, the craft beer drinker:

This group is more likely to spend time thinking about beer rather than work. They are more open-minded than most people, seek out interesting and varied experiences and are intellectually curious. Craft-beer drinkers also skew as having a lower sense of responsibility—they don't stress about missed deadlines and tend to be happy-go-lucky about life.

Yeah, I'd say those hit the keg right on the tap, if you know what I'm saying.

Halloween at the bar/club

Last night I abandoned resistance for a limited tour of hegemony. Surrender is not painless.

If the night were a literary work, the major narrative would have been foreshadowed by the radio preferences on the drive out. We had Green Day (a concession in normal listening patterns I'm happy to make for the group) and Against Me playing over a discussion about each band's work. AM's Joy played and the car sang along.  I thought this was a token of collective enjoyment and (for lack of a better understanding of what motivates people to be around many more) removed from introspection. Steve changed what was playing to pop radio, finding the previous music was responsible for bring down the mood. Max agreed. I was confused. They then sang to music I'd never heard. I was lost.

The story has an interlude. We dropped of Meredith's car and Sarah's costume, and meandered around Syracuse waiting for Jeff and Megan

Eventually, we arrived at the main attraction. It was surreal, first, that such an apparently common activity is for me so overwhelming and, again, that uncomfortable can be infused with so much removed indifference. Despite an inescapable undertone of "I'm not really here,"  an hour into the bar scene, I found the ambition to escape, leaving disappointed and misanthropic. I wanted for and attempted normative behavior. I hoped the box I occupy was less of a prison and more of a choice, that this brand of fun wasn't, to me, inaccessible. Soon after, I lowered my desires. I just hoped no one noticed, at least not enough to spoil their good time.

I saw a ghost in flannel and what resembled a familiar face. The past stirred enough to fortify envy.  There is a whole world I can't enter; there are people lost to me because of this. And yet some can fluidly transition with elegance. (Though it was clear to see many have neither the elegance nor said fluidity.)

Over the unfamiliar music, decibels too high, and through the deluge of strange faces, I tried to scream to Brad the poor excuses that would get me too the doors without alarm. I walked to the car, broke the zip tied emergency key, and found a stashed book. I read, appropriately, about conformity, rationalization, and psychology before my eyelids gained weight. I spent two cold hours sleeping. There was nothing I wanted to do more; I couldn't have been more content. Silence and solitude are my yellow sun. (Where as, bars are a shard of kryptonite.)
I woke to the phone, and picked up enthused party goers.

I've never had the obligation of designated driver bestowed and I've never shared the company of friends chemically uninhibited. I like neither. But all seemed copacetic, or at least I was too much in my own head to care. My body was the phlegmatic driver unmoved by drunk dialog, meanwhile, elsewhere I was increasingly alienated by the chatter. The fun of drinking and dancing are so foreign to my experience. How can these things compensate for the rest of the scene, and do so to the extent that one would want to return often? The best I can offer to explain the estrangement is to juxtapose it to the fictional Jen Crane of Defying Gravity who, unlike the rest of the crew, cannot see Beta. (It's a good show if you watch it all the way through. I swear. That's why it got canned -- just like Surface.) ..Even the shows I pick to follow are losers! :)

I think there is more to say, but I don't yet have words for it. The employees (all girls), wearing what would be appropriate for a beach, dancing on top of the bar was the most obvious aspect of an underlining sex and exploitation motif that might fit more into a theme of desperate-for-companionship better than lust. Though, maybe hedonism fits as the chief archetype better than a model defined by deficits. Sex, drugs, and dancing in a low light package wrapped in music loud enough to block any complex thought.
I worry the negative discourse of my intrapersonal dialog is merely rationalization for an inherent discomfort. Either way, it is frustration and generally upsetting to feel anxieties around an inability to conform here. That this has social significance or is the key for peer based interaction is, for me, harrowing.
However, more concerning is the available tools for reaching fulfilling entertainment. The impression left from Max and Steve's babbling afterward is that their night was greatly rewarding. The women they were excited to have seen and talked to, the drug that inspired and empowered them, nor the dancing that seemed to fulfill them have an entrance for me, have reward for me. This appears to be a large defecate, a disabling impairment.
At least sports do something for me. The euphoria I feel when I'm exhausted from a good game is what I saw in them driving home. The world according to Will would be a much better place if rugby pitches were where bars are now. (...and it wasn't soiled by macho attitudes and malicious intent, and they played 7s instead of 15s)

Unique. Like New Orleans: 'What Is Southern Comfort?' Campaign Rolls Out | MediaPost Publications | Marketing Daily

Untitled

#Sex, alcohol, fat among world's big killers!! http://ow.ly/wW0T health risks news london

Carts of Darkness

Russian Roulette T-Shirt

via zazzle.com

I was once awakened by some loud beer pong players. This t-shirt was inspired by my anger to get revenge.  To purchase this shirt, please visit by store at Check it! T-Shirts.  Image is courtesy of Lee Skinner from his DeviantART account.

Rib Room and Old New Orleans Rum host dinner | New Orleans Drinks | NOLA.com

Behind the Scenes:: Still Wounded (A Photo Series and Interview)

       

All photos by Aaron Huey and can be seen at the New York Times interview here.

Aaron Huey arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at the start of a self-assigned photographic road trip to document poverty in America.

The poverty he found on the reservation stopped him cold.

"Pine Ridge is the scariest place I've ever been - more so than in a Taliban ambush," Mr. Huey said.  "It was emotionally devastating.  I'd call my wife late at night crying."

Overwhelmed by the poverty – and at the same time by scenes of people trying to maintain the Lakota way of life – Mr. Huey abandoned the rest of his nationwide project to focus on Pine Ridge.  Five years later, he's still photographing on the reservation, which includes the Wounded Knee battlefield.

Mr. Huey, 33, is a photgrapher for National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler.  He also freelances for The New Yorker and Geo.  In 2007, he photographed in Afghanistan for The Times.

Still Wounded is an amazing photo series and great interview on this photographer and what he sees on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.