Like Lazarus, only with a worse attitude and better dress sense...

Hi All,
Im back, but probably will only have intermittent posts for the next few weeks because I found myself on the wrong end of a colorectal surgery rotation. Which wasn't meant to be a joke, but the pun was pretty good, now that I read it. I will describe the joys of long, long days, a permanent line across my forehead from a surgical cap and exactly how you stick you finger up someones whotsit in an investigative sense another time.
Right now, I just wanted to poke fun (once again, no pun intended) at the interestingly named "Code Pink" activist group of wimmin..ummm...feminists...sheilas. Apart from possibly breaking a raft of laws that prohibit excessive use of a colour reminiscent of a baboon's arse, they also smack slightly of misinformed opportunisim.
This they did by protesting the latest hippy-horror-de-jour, the Gulf oil spill, by marching on BP's headquarters wearing not much more than strategically placed packing tape (be careful when you take it off, BTW) and the aforementioned simian pink. Whereupon they chanted "BP, what do you say? How many fish did you kill today?". To which I would like to reply, ummm, not as many as you'd think. Y'see, oil often floats, fish don't. Unless they're dead, and thats the thing, if there were millions of dead fish, you would see them from the air, everywhere, because they would be doing the dead-fish putrefactive bob on the surface. Now, some of the oil has probably been emulsified (hence the reports of an alleged underwater plume) but it doesn't take long for it to re-coalesce on the surface, and most larger fish can move quickly enough to get away from the oil, anyway. So there may be some sprat sized fish that get offed by the oil, especially in coastal areas, but it wont represent that much of the total number of the fish that are out there.
The CodePink founder, Madea Benjamin, then went on to state:

“This is the crude awakening that our country is on the wrong track and that we need an energy system that doesn't kill workers, that doesn't destroy our ocean and that works with nature, not against nature,”

That would be nice, and I have seen something like this in action before, but I don't think Madea would like it. Probably because the options available to us down that track seem to wind up with women slaving over wood stoves or spending their days engaged in such career edifying past-times as hauling water. Oh, and puh-lease, dont even begin to talk to me about solar power either, because as anyone who has ever had to live with a 12-volt solar system would know (and I have), its probably less hassle to burn tallow-rush lamps and beat your laundry on a rock by the river.
The BP oil spill is immensely regrettable, for everyone concerned, but somehow I don't think its going to singlehandedly destroy our oceans, or even the bit of ocean that its occurred in. At the end of the day, we either accept the fact that we go without oil and the attendant consequences, or stop the pity-party and deal with the occasional oopsy. It might also reassure readers to know that oil gushers are much like bleeding, and all bleeding stops. Eventually. Even if we did nothing, the oil would lose pressure after awhile and stop. The fish will be fine, a few seabirds and otters will die tragically, much to the continued erections of news photographers and environental activists everywhere, and before long the oil will have mostly broken down and that part of the planet will be back to business as usual. If you dont believe me, then I invite you to read about the Mina Al Ahmadi oil spill during the Gulf War, which remains the biggest oil spill in history, where transects of the affected coral reefs only a few short years later revealed that they had escaped "remarkedly unscathed".
I strap myself in and await your hate mail.