30: Oil Spill? More like Oil Thrill!

Wassup, my man-made ecoblogical disasters?

So unless you're blind, deaf and dumb, you've likely heard about the Deep Horizon oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the ensuing spillage. Well the spill recently hit Day 40 and with BP's recent "Top Kill" initiative to cap the burst well a failure there seems to be no certain end to the oily menace.

This is where I come in. Being a self-appointed media-ologist that I am, I'm here to help BP out of this sticky situation, this sticky oily dead animals floating in the tide-y situation.Why am I doing this? Because while there are at least a dozen groups looking out for the spillees, the wildlife and the fishermen. Who's looking out for the multi-billion dollar oil companies, the spillers. No one, that's who.

Look at what you did media, now who's the jerk?

Step 1: Divert Attention

Sure, the oil spill is currently dominating the headlines but the rule of thumb for these things is out of sight, out of mind. The only reason people care about the oil spill is because it's all they're seeing and hearing about it. Also all the dead things.

 Flipper? Is that you pa-AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

So instead of trying (and constantly failing) to divert the oil flow, instead why not divert their attention. From the latest figures it seems the clean-up cost for the spill has reached 940 million dollars. Damn, that's a lotta zeros. That kind of money can buy you one hell of a distraction. Now thing you should keep in mind is to keep the distraction both something as flashy as it is newsworthy. Maybe Ahmadinejad suddenly finds several crates of weapons grade plutonium on his doorstep.Maybe Justin Bieber wakes up to find he's missing his left ear. The point is what ever you choose to do , it has to whip the news networks into a mouth foaming frenzy. Might I suggest you finally get around to firing the layabouts known as the British Royal Family.

Into the sun.

"The sun will never set on the British Empire, indeed."

"I swear to god Charlie, if you make that joke one more time,  one more time..."

Step 2:Mystification

No, unfortunately this step has nothing to do with wizards or computer puzzle games from the mid-90s. So I'll assume that since you're reading this far step one has failed. Damn. I guess, that gaggle of loud whiny sissies just can't go a day without complaining "devastated economy" and "cataclysmic ecological destruction." Boo hoo.

So onto step 2, mystification is simply obscuring the facts, so all those pesky environmental groups and governments can't figure out what's really going on. Obviously you can't just flat out lie to them, but you bending the truth a little can't hurt.

 

People. Hurt people is what I meant.

Change your units to metric. Sure having over 20,000,000 gallons of oil spilled into the gulf seems like a bad thing. But really that's only 0.075 gigalitres. Look at how small the number is.

Replace the high-tech underwater live-feed of the spill with a black and white 8mm camera in a ziploc bag on a rope, that you pull up every few hours to upload to footage to You-tube.

Begin sending out press releases on the back of McDonalds hamburger wrappers written in pencil and ketchup.

 

See? It's just that easy.

Step 3: Fixing the Burst Well

So it's come to this. Now fixing the burst well isn't going to be easy, it's all the freaking way at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for starters.The well head is also far too deep to send any divers, so all repair work has to be done entirely remotely by robotic drones. Finally even if everything goes with a hitch, there's still only a 60-70% chance it will even work. Man this is gonna be hard. 

Now as for "solutions" you've come up with so far, the "Junk Shot" "Top Kill" and "Top Hat", you should probably fire the person in charge of naming things over there.

We are not changing the company's name to "Everything Hitler", Phil.

 

Now your main problems with these "solutions" is that, well, they aren't very impressive. Let's fire garbage and mud into the well head and hope it clogs the spill or let's try to contain the oil with a large dome. Logically they're sound, but visually they're meh. For example, I spent the last 5 minutes watching this live feed of the effort to cap the well. Holy donkey tits, that's boring.

 

 

This is why the American public are so angry, they watch a small robotic arm spend 2 hours trying to maneuver a small hook onto a small ring and they think that nothing's getting done.  What you need to do now is something big, something exciting that shows the American people you're doing everything in your power to help end the spill. Like fill two supertankers with Dawn dish washing detergent and crash them into one another at full speed.

Step 4: Spinning the Truth

 

Ok, worst case scenario time. You can't stop the oil leak, and the U.S. government is demanding you implode the well, thus losing you billions in untapped oil reserves. Solution: simply convince everyone that the oil spill isn't as bad as they think. Here a few lines you might consider using:

"Oil? What oil? Why's that's just our newest product BP's (patent pending) Ocean Blackener."

"Oil spill? Why I was too busy enjoying my gasoline fueled car and all the other things made after the Industrial Revolution to notice that little nusiance."

"While we were down there we figure we might as well get rid of all those pesky fish for you"

"But we thought you Cajuns loved blackened catfish."

 

 

You should probably say it in a British accent to soften the blow. Ooh, or better yet get Bono to do it. 

Well there you have it British Petroleum, my guaranteed* fool-proof 4 step plan on how to get yourself back on track in your effort to seal off the well head. I don't need any thanks. I do this only for the self satisfaction of helping out others. But if you say had 20,000 shares of BP laying around that you weren't using, I could take it off your hands. Just sayin'.