Stealing from rich, giving to poor

When I got to the end of the bridge I was so upset I was nearly hallucinating. I saw a bus stop with a giant poster ad on the wall for the Raveonettes, which I failed to recognize at the time because I thought it was something else. I thought it was the blonde ex with someone evil, and the balance in the pit of my stomach that Matt says was in fact tied to the core of the planet found its final straw, and I limped home, wretching. I found a tiny roach at the Firefighter's memorial which I smoked myself alone, and that was my amazing reunion with all the golden kids that the great big outer space God thing was trying to make happen, but which you prevented, because you are stupid, and "you probably likes a lot of misery."

This was the band whose bus stop advertisement looked to me like Laurel and whatever else you think fits the description of most possible evil person available.



I'm skipping a free trip to the zoo right now so I can figure out why this story became the saga of the Rhinegold, the activity on the sea floor where a man finally rejects all the scorn the pretty water nymphs have to offer.

Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore oil drilling rig owned by Transocean. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the rig was commissioned by R&B Falcon, which later became part of Transocean, registered in Majuro, Marshall Islands, and leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013. In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 ft (10,683 m) and measured depth of 35,055 ft (10,685 m) in the Tiber Oil Field at Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Houston, in 4,132 feet (1,259 m) of water. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The resulting fire could not be extinguished and, on 22 April 2010, Deepwater Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

And Frank, I need you to shut your evil devil face while I figure out what happened here. "Hyundai Heaven" was the place where we finally unloaded that car left to me by Denise Rhiner. Remember her? Someone obviously remembers her because for instance THE RHINE FUCKING RIVER. That was the car that needed the "valve job" to prevent the noisy backfire problem. Backfire! Kablam! Uncombusted fuel accumulating in the exhaust system, ignited far beyond the pistons or whatever, rattling the whole vehicle with loud explosions. I used to drive that car to ETP Harrison when I worked there. I remember an episode of loud backfiring going back home near that Arby's on 52nd. The one where D.Renner stole that hot air balloon once during the Renn Fayre I was hiding near that biblical "House of Jacob", where I in fact once mistakenly hooked up with D. Rhiner even though she had forgotten that by 1998 when she was dating Charles, our basement dweller that year until we kicked him out in September. Following this? Strange romantic interest of a Charles, bearing a combustible automobile, called Hyun, dai.

Denise got rid of her car because her license was revoked because she refused to take anti-seizure meds because doctors had been messing up her brains with the crazy drugs for so long she had given up on them. She claimed she had experienced two or three seizure-free years without the meds, but when she told this to her doctor, the doctor got her driver's license removed right away. So I got to drive her blue Hyundai for free, before unloading it at "Hyundai Heaven" which I had heard about from somewhere, hopefully someone other than "Auto Ron".

There was construction on the road on April 19, 2010, at SE 39th and Gladstone, and I was aiming to get to the amphitheater to meet Kevin Fiske at 4:20 AM on April 20. The construction barricades confused the driver, who was inclined to get me smokes at the Sev on Steele rather than the Plaid on Gladstone which I required. I required this so I could avoid detection by Community Safety on 28th near Steele, because I was unsure how they'd react to my being on campus for a 420 with Kevin and Erich and friends. When the Becky the evil dye job driver went past the Plaid on Gladstone I exploded verbally, I screamed louder than I had screamed at anybody in years, because I thought she had driven past the Plaid on purpose just to be bothersome, rather than what may have happened which is that she was confused by the construction that night and was unable to see the driveway to the store. I made her turn around and we finally made it to the Plaid. Later she said she was simply unable to hear my instructions, even though we tested her hearing by whispering at her in her living room from upstairs in her bedroom and she could hear that just fine.

Me and Mulder went over this a zillion times in 2011. Today I am seeing what must have been the handiwork of the X people all over Delmar and elsewhere, where the streets are named after this experience in the Bethlehem neighborhood where I first stayed with Brendan and Christopher and Carol for Xmas break in 1989-1990.

Elsemere the neighborhood, like the Chaucer variation. Laurel and Dyer and words with "well" in them, like the Admiral that frustrated Napoleon so much before he turned onto a breaded beef dish. Abbey Road even.

The freakish Capaldi monster was still talking about the well as recently as a few hours ago and to be honest I have always wondered about this because I think I may have crossed some wires here by mistake, getting curious for instance about Baker and Howard Rheingold and his well.com because of internet politics long before it was ever necessary to wonder about it for emergency exploding oil well purposes.

But it matters because in the beginning blah blah darkness moved upon the face of the deep. Yes, this was the beginning, it is true, the beginning of the Christianity story, a very brief number of days after the glowing eye in the sky, though for other reasons it seems like winter 2006 was the actual beginning of anything that has any useful starting point at all, planetwise, according to the theory that somehow made Scully blow up the sky at 10:10 that one day, unless that concept gets corrected too for whatever reason. What kind of scientist would I be if I failed to update my theories to match the data?

The point is, well.com and Rheingold were on my radar as Wagnerian analogies starting at least as far back as 2003, and so I'm wondering for how long I've been staring at myself in a 4d mirror without knowing it was only me. A lot of time gets wasted that way and we're all very upset about it.

Watching the Capaldi monster today and hearing the references to the "well", knowing that doctors only ever make people sick on purpose these days, we can assume he means a well full of expensive petroleum rather than the state of actually being healthy (as the spoonerized Con topic back then was pronounced "wealth and hellness" btw). And Con is obviously very important or else Ricardo Montalban would never have showed up after years of exile with his retarded wrath, resulting in the Enterprise being assaulted by a ship it had known as friendly. Ahem.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

At this point we are walking with Aly in Portland, okay? It is the Burnside Bridge in 2010 and I am talking to whatever can hear me, saying you can do whatever you want to these idiot humans because I am all done watching them remove my friends from me using expensive security guards that lie about invading my home and yours. Fuck all you people and yr "miss takes", eat a bunch of petrol and die, or something. OH I THINK THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY EYE!

Walking walking walking. Years of walking. Eleven years of walking actually. At that point. Twenty years since fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. I was 37 years old when I walked home that morning. Had spent hours semi-conscious at a bus stop by Beckwith Bicycles and a Texaco, waiting for the bus to arrive. Passed out from exhaustion on the bus, woke up on the wrong side of Burnside Bridge with a Catholic priest sitting across from me staring. Left the bus immediately and started walking. Walked across bridge. Hallucinated picture of big defiled Laurel monster. Gulf of Mexico murdered by extraterrestrial flatulence. Officially, anyway. If it was blown up on purpose you should ask the people that made that episode about the Orpheus.

Die Walküre

Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), WWV 86B, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner with a German libretto by the composer. It is the second of the four operas that form Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

The story of the opera is based on the Norse mythology told in the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda. In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one in a group of female figures who decide which soldiers die in battle and which live. Die Walküre's best-known excerpt is the "Ride of the Valkyries".

It received its premiere at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich on 26 June 1870. Wagner originally intended the opera to be premiered as part of the entire cycle, but was forced to allow the performance at the insistence of his patron King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It was first presented as part of the complete cycle on 14 August 1876 at Wagner's Bayreuth Festival. The opera made its United States premiere at the Academy of Music in New York on 2 April 1877.

Although Die Walküre is the second of the Ring operas, it was the third in order of conception. Wagner worked backwards from planning an opera about Siegfried's death, then deciding he needed another opera to tell of Siegfried's youth, then deciding he needed to tell the tale of Siegfried's conception and of Brünnhilde's attempts to save Siegfried's parents, and finally deciding he also needed a prelude that told of the original theft of the Rheingold and the creation of the ring.

Wagner intermingled development of the text of these last two planned operas, i.e. Die Walküre, originally entitled Siegmund und Sieglinde: der Walküre Bestrafung ("Siegmund and Sieglinde: the Valkyrie's Punishment") and what became Das Rheingold. Wagner had first written of his intention to create a trilogy of operas in the August 1851 draft of "Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde" (A Communication to My Friends), but did not produce any sketches of the plot of Siegmund and Sieglinde until November. The following summer, Wagner and his wife rented the Pension Rinderknecht, a pied-à-terre on the Zürichberg (now Hochstrasse 56–58 in Zürich). There he worked on the prose draft of Die Walküre, an extended description of the story including dialogue between 17 and 26 May 1852 and the verse draft between 1 June and 1 July. It was between these drafts that Wagner made the decision not to introduce Wotan in act 1, instead leaving the sword the god had been going to bring on stage already embedded in the tree before the action starts. The fair copy of the text was completed by 15 December 1852.

BP Is Found Grossly Negligent in Deepwater Horizon Disaster
Federal Court Decision Could Mean Fine of Up to $18 Billion
By DANIEL GILBERT and JUSTIN SCHECK
Updated Sept. 4, 2014 8:37 p.m. ET

BP PLC was grossly negligent in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, a federal judge ruled, handing down a decision that could cost the company as much as $18 billion in pollution fines for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Thursday's decision could leave BP on the hook for far more than the $3.5 billion it had set aside for civil penalties under the U.S. Clean Water Act and likely would easily exceed the biggest previous fine under the statute.

The $3.5 billion was based in part on BP's expectation that the court would rule the company liable for simple negligence. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's finding of gross negligence, or more reckless and extreme behavior, means BP faces a penalty of as much as $4,300 for each barrel of crude spilled in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. That is nearly quadruple the maximum civil fine had the finding been simple negligence, which means the failure to take reasonable care.

The judge could impose lower penalties but the fine is likely to surpass the previous record under the act: the $1 billion paid by Transocean Ltd. RIGN.VX +0.32% , the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, in a settlement last year.

Thursday's 153-page ruling describes repeated instances in which BP took measures to cut costs despite safety risks. Some of these decisions "evince an extreme deviation from the standard of care and a conscious disregard of known risks," wrote Judge Barbier, who is based in New Orleans.

His decision is among the biggest legal setbacks for BP in four years of litigation over the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 crew members and left oil leaking into the Gulf for months, killing wildlife and fouling beaches. Though the initial cleanup is over, scientists continue to monitor the Gulf for aftereffects from the spill. The Coast Guard said crude still occasionally washes ashore from Louisiana to Florida.

BP has taken a pretax loss of about $43 billion for civil and criminal settlements, cleanup and related costs, including the $3.5 billion set aside for the Clean Water Act penalty. BP had $27.5 billion in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter.

The company's shares closed 5.9% lower Thursday in London.

BP disputed that it was grossly negligent and said it would appeal the decision. Judge Barbier's finding of willful misconduct "is not supported by the evidence at trial," the company said.

BP could wind up owing considerably less than $18 billion for the pollution violations, depending in part on how much oil the judge finds was spilled into the Gulf, and what the company did to mitigate the damage. The U.S. government says BP is liable for spilling 4.2 million barrels. The company says it is liable for 2.45 million barrels.

Judge Barbier's ruling found that the company wasn't alone in causing the rig explosion, assigning lesser blame to Transocean and to Halliburton Co. HAL -0.70% , which performed the cement work on the well. Both were negligent, the judge ruled, finding that BP was responsible for 67% of the liability, Transocean for 30% and Halliburton for 3%.

Both contractors had agreements with BP that protected them from certain liabilities unless they were found to be grossly negligent. The ruling said those agreements are valid and enforceable.

Transocean praised the ruling for affirming an industry standard in which the owners of oil wells, rather than drilling contractors, shoulder most of the liability.

Halliburton, which on Tuesday settled with Gulf Coast residents, businesses and local governments that were damaged by the spill for $1.1 billion, said Thursday's decision meant its litigation regarding Deepwater Horizon "is essentially over."

Tom Claps, a litigation analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, said the finding that BP was responsible for only two-thirds of the blame "should significantly reduce their exposure at the Clean Water Act phase." He estimated the company's pollution liability at $7 billion to $12 billion.

A trial on the Clean Water Act fine is set for January; 80% of the proceeds will go to environmental restoration projects and 20% into a trust fund to cover cleanup costs for future spills.

Though there have been several government investigations and lawsuits probing what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon in April 2010, Judge Barbier's decision may be the most thorough and detailed reconstruction to date and included some new conclusions.

He criticized a drilling decision that left debris in the bottom of the well, clogging a critical valve. While trying to clear the valve, drillers likely created a hole in the pipe at the bottom of the well, which ultimately allowed volatile natural gas to flow up on to the oil rig and ignite, the judge wrote.

He placed particular emphasis on the failure of BP workers to interpret a negative pressure test, which is meant to ensure that no gas is seeping into a well.

A BP manager who examined the test declared it successful, but later told investigators the results looked "squirrely," according to the decision.

The misinterpretation of the test, even after a second BP official found fault with it, "constitutes an extreme departure from the care required under the circumstances," Judge Barbier found. The judge also criticized BP for lapses he termed "profit-driven decisions."

A money manager whose BP holding totals more than $500 million said the decision was a surprise. "I didn't think they would be able to prove gross negligence," he said, adding that the decision extends the uncertainty that has lingered over the company since 2010.

Brian Youngberg, an analyst with Edward Jones, said Thursday's decision is "obviously a negative" and could cause investors to second-guess BP's strategy not to settle the case earlier. But many U.S. investors expect spill-related litigation to drag on for decades, he said.

Paying for the costs of Deepwater Horizon has transformed BP. Chief Executive Bob Dudley has sold about $40 billion in assets, turning BP into a smaller company that aims to become more profitable in coming years on the back of investments in new projects in places including the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Dudley said in July that the company is pumping the equivalent of 250,000 barrels of oil a day in the Gulf, up 32% from the average last year. BP was among the most active bidders in a lease sale in the Gulf last month. It is drilling with 10 rigs there, more than it ever has.

—Russell Gold contributed to this article.

I've read in Jules Verne that the big ugly oil spill was a fixed point and essentially unavoidable, though when it was starting it did have a cause, which could have been prevented, which was every person involved except for me, when I should have been left alone with my literal actual God to get high at 4 in the morning at what we all know was my only home for decades. The temporal loop between that bridge and that fishing trip in 1990 is the grain of sand at the center of the pearl you call everything.