It’s 4/20—the day stoners celebrate getting high, and the day rightwing extremists celebrate Hitler’s birthday. It’s also the date of the Columbine High School massacre, and now it’s the 1-year anniversary of the BP oil spill. Wow. It seems like every year there’s another reason to get stoned on this date. Columbine, BP… it’s like 4/20 has become the day that stoners all get high… and people who aren’t stoned are the ones who go out and do something stupid. The nice thing for stoners is that they don’t even have to remember the date, since statistically speaking, they’re bound to be getting high on any given day. So 4/20 is undoubtedly the holiday that is most often observed in retrospect. “Dude, yesterday was 4/20! Good thing we got stoned!”It’s the 1-year anniversary of the BP oil spill! How should we mark the occasion? Maybe light a tar ball and then try to blow it out! The National Park Service still has to post health warnings along various areas of the Gulf Coast. Basically the warning boils down to “if this beach looks or smells like a Jiffy Lube, leave right away.” The warnings tell people what to do if they come in contact with oil, oil-contaminated water, or tar balls. For the warnings to be truly effective they really should be posted in both English and whatever language pelicans use.
The waters around the Gulf of Mexico are still full of dispersants used to break up the oil. One thing we learned from this disaster is that dispersants don’t disperse. Essentially, BP just turned a huge environmental catastrophe into a huge environmental catastrophe that’s harder to see. Now BP is pushing to resume drilling at their 10 deepwater wells in the Gulf by this July. The only toxic substance that BP managed to remove was Tony Hayward. And fishermen are reporting dark lesions, rotting fins, and discoloration in the fish they’re catching in the Gulf. Yeesh. It’s going to take quite a dollop of tartar sauce to cover that up. Many of the chemicals present in the oil and dispersants are known to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, kidney damage, and irritation of the digestive tract. Of course to be fair, so does the diet of the average American. The chemicals also cause lung damage, burning pain in the nose and throat, coughing, pulmonary edema, cancer, difficulty breathing, and memory loss. Actually at that point, memory loss is something of a relief. Thank God it’s 4/20.
And if you’re in New York City on 4/20, the Randi Rhodes Show’s own Bruce Cherry will be appearing in the world-famous Marijuana-Logues with Tony Camin and Rob Cantrell at the Gramercy Theater. Show is at 8, ticket info here. Happy 4/20!
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There is now officially one too many things on the internet… here’s rightwing rat boy James O’Keefe dancing and lip-syncing his way through some sort of music video celebrating his exploits:
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