By NotHoney on September 3rd, 2010 at 11:57 am | 9 Comments »
We can’t say it enough: Thanks to everyone who’s donated to the Battle of the Fang!
It’s hard to escape BP’s propaganda machine claiming they’ve cleaned up the estimated four million gallons of oil they dumped into the Gulf. While I’m here in Florida, visiting family in my home town on the Gulf Coast, the ads are inescapable. They run on just about every network station I’ve seen and they run often. The oil is gone, we’re here for the long haul, no worries, go back to buying our gas and not worrying about the devastation of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Guardian UK reports that BP has spent $1 million per week on advertising in the 18 weeks since the explosion and spill. That’s a lot of money to convince you and me that all that oil isn’t a problem and that it disappeared as soon as the gushing well was capped. It’s also an enormous pile of horse shit.
“Media Monitor’s trends report for the first four weeks of August shows BP spent $2.7 million in the main US advertising markets. In one week alone, from August 10-16, it spent $947,041 buying up slots in the top 87 radio markets and 50 television areas and selected cable channels.’
The report also shows that spending was focused on key areas damaged by the spill, with five cities in Florida – including Miami and Fort Myers – in the top 10 areas in which BP bought the most airtime in the week from August 10-16.”
Congress requires BP to reveal how much they’ve spent on advertising and when President Obama got wind of the campaign he warned BP: “”What I don’t want to hear is, when they’re spending that kind of money on their shareholders and on TV advertising, that they’re nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf who are having a hard time.”
Now comes news of another oil rig explosion in the Gulf! You’ve probably heard that a platform owned by Mariner Energy Inc. exploded about 80 miles from Vermilion Bay, Louisiana. All 13 rig workers are accounted for, but there are reports of a mile-long oil slick coming from the platform. The Washington Post reports: “The platform is a fixed petroleum platform that was in production at the time of the fire, according to a homeland security operational update obtained by The Associated Press.’
The update said the platform was producing about 58,800 gallons of oil and 900,000 cubic feet of gas per day. The platform can store 4,200 gallons of oil. ”
So while I’m down home this week I went to a local beach to smell the wonderful Gulf breezes, and to see how things look. I took some pictures in my iPhone so you can see the beautiful bayous and beaches I grew up on. Even today when I smell salt air and decaying vegetation I’m reminded of my home town and days spent on beaches watching fiddler crabs dig holes and collecting shells and getting really sunburnt. This is what we’re raising money to protect and to restore – beautiful beaches and swamps where wildlife flourish and humans can enjoy the benefits of a healthy ecosystem. This is why we ask you to donate to GulfAid so often, and why Stephen Moyer chose GulfAid for this charity contest.
Please donate to GulfAid. We can’t forget what’s been done to the people and wildlife of the Gulf Coast, and we can’t rely on BP to fix their own mess.
Yew ah really startin' to piss me off, Sheriff!
Team Bill! We need your help! Look what happened to our lead!
Team Bill=$16,784 – Team Eric=$17,415
Please donate to GulfAid and help kick some Viking ass! Remember! the charity auctions for the Sock of Destiny signed by Steve and Anna, and Steve’s signed script are also open so get in there and bid like you mean it!
By NotHoney on August 27th, 2010 at 2:34 pm | 25 Comments »
Thanks to everyone on Team Bill and Team Eric for your incredible generosity in the Battle of the Fang!
Oil spill in Louisiana waters
Misleading information about how much oil is in the Gulf of Mexico is traced to a government scientific report released without peer review, reports Mother Jones.
“Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee … said the report had given ‘many people a false sense of confidence regarding the state of the Gulf’ and should not have been released until it was complete. ‘If you are not confident it was right, it shouldn’t have been released … That is obviously of great concern to people in the Gulf. They don’t want to be forgotten. They don’t want this to be downplayed or low-balled, which is the case in some quarters since this has been released.’”
It turns out there’s more oil in the Gulf than the incomplete government report indicated, and it’s far more toxic than reported.
“Scientists at the University of Georgia have found that the vast majority of the oil is still in the water. Scientists from the University of South Florida have a new study finding that the oil suspended underwater may be more toxic to microorganisms in the Gulf than researchers previously thought. And researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution released yet another study contradicting government reports. Theirs found that not only is the dispersed oil hanging in a 22-mile-long, one-mile-wide plume, it’s also degrading much more slowly in the plumes than it would at the surface. ‘The plumes could stick around for quite a while,’ study co-author Ben Van Mooy told the AP. (The government’s top scientists, meanwhile, have claimed that the oil in the Gulf is degrading rapidly.)”
See what Ahm doin,' Sheriff? I'm walkin' away with yoah lead.
This is why we’re asking you to please donate to GulfAid because the people and wildlife of the Gulf Coast will need our help for years to come. Together we’ve donated serious money to a problem that needs serious solutions and we’re so proud of all of you for helping so generously.
By NotHoney on August 20th, 2010 at 7:53 pm | 16 Comments »
Yew cain't kiss yer way ta victory, Blondie!
What is going on here, Team Bill? We’ve managed to let our guard down and the Viking hordes have swooped in and smacked our butts! Are we gonna take this lying down? Hell NO!
Team Bill: $12,794 – Team Eric: $12,905
Team Bill and GulfAid need you to put us back on top and see us to victory! We’ve got only three weeks left to reject the Tall Blond One’s advances and take the lead. Please donate whatever you can to GulfAid and feel free to be creative! Bake sales, car washes, garage/yard sales, whatever ill-gotten gains you’re stashing, it’s all good.
If this is your first time donating, follow the link to our original post, scroll down a bit and you’ll find the Paypal button. Remember! We’re still collecting your ideas for the winner’s and loser’s T-shirts, so add ‘em to the post.
Big thanks to everyone who’s donated to GulfAid and SOS Children’s Villages.
Please don’t believe that because the well is capped, and even that is not a permanent solution to the gusher, that the environmental and human disaster is over. It’s far from over. The people and wildlife of the Gulf Coast will need our help for a long time to come and donating to GulfAid is a good start.
Keeping the story alive is important as film maker Spike Lee makes clear in his look at life in Louisiana with a new documentary for HBO, “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.”
The National Resources Defense Council just announced several beaches closed because of oil. They include County Park East, Fort Pickens, Johnson Beach & Perdido Key State Park, all in Florida. If you want to find out about beach closures the NRDC has a handy map:
You can track oil washing ashore and find out what to do if you find oil on their Web site.
By NotHoney on August 14th, 2010 at 10:15 am | 16 Comments »
Maid's outfeit, mah ass, yer goin' down, Sheriff!
Hey Team Bill! Check out the week’s totals!
Team Bill = $11,380/Team Eric = $10,755
Team Bill still leads but you don’t want to see our vampire wearing a French maid’s outfit, right? So, let’s get busy and raise more money for GulfAid! I dunno about you, but I can’t wait to see Alexander Skarsgard wearing a “Bill’s Other Blonde” T-shirt. Please donate to GulfAid! Remember, Aem and I will be at Barrel Oak Winery in Delaplane, Virginia this Sunday from 1-5 p.m. for a special GulfAid fund raiser. We’d love to meet you!
We’re proud to show you that we’re now listed on GulfAid’s donors page on their Web site. This is ALL OF YOU who’ve donated so much and so generously to Stephen Moyer’s chosen cause.
Click to Enlarge
All y’all have done a FANTASTIC job of supporting the Battle of the Fang! Both teams are blown away by your generosity to GulfAid and SOS Children’s Village. BIG SMOOCHIES.
Please keep up the momentum and help us beat back the Sheriff’s advances by donating to GulfAid. The oil is not gone, despite what BP and the mainstream media would like us to believe. This myth is compounded by BP’s recent firing of 10,000 oil cleanup workers, according to Mother Jones.
“On July 13, the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command was reporting 46,000 responders. On July 23, it was down to 30,000, and the numbers have hovered around the low 30s since. Included in this tally are some Coast Guard and National Guard staff, but BP and subcontractors comprise the vast majority. … In Grand Isle, Louisiana, cleanup workers (none of whom can be named; you know this drill by now) say their coworkers were either told to go home for Tropical Storm Bonnie and then never called back or fired in a massive and sudden drug test.’
“The scaleback is set to continue. Supervisors say they’re supposed to break down to just a ‘skeleton crew’ by the end of September, so hopefully the media myth that there’s no more oil anywhere comes true. ‘Everything still changes day to day,’ the supervisor told me. ‘You don’t know when a bunch of oil’s gonna pop up.’”
That oil has popped up in nearly every coastal national park, as reported by the National Parks Conservation Association. NPCA President Tom Kiernan and others from the organization recently toured Gulf Islands National Seashore to survey the damage.
David Helvarg, writing for the Huffington Post describes BP’s attempts to make the oil go away:
“It will take years of study to determine the impacts of the BP disaster on the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. My fear is that if Florida’s tourist beaches aren’t heavily oiled (as they appear not to be for now), and if the mainstream media no longer feels it has to “feed the beast,” (as a CNN producer put it) then the long term impacts of the spill on the Gulf’s habitat and marine wildlife and those whose livelihoods depend on them may be ignored and forgotten. Consider how other long-term and larger disasters degrading our ocean commons are being ignored. These include plastic, urban and agricultural runoff pollution, climate linked sea-level rise, acidification and arctic melting, loss of habitat (including Louisiana’s shredding wetlands) and industrial overfishing for the global seafood market.’
“Maybe if Snooki and the Situation from Jersey Shore were as oil covered as a flock of Louisiana Pelicans or Lindsey Lohan’s flesh was as saturated with leaked methane as it’s been with alcohol or BP’s Bob Dudley admitted he was a True Blood vampire we’d be able to retain public interest in this unfinished disaster. Still, for people of the Gulf and beyond who understand what it means to have your life linked to a living sea, BP’s impacts won’t be going away anytime soon, or probably anytime in our lifetimes.”
By NotHoney on August 12th, 2010 at 8:07 am | 127 Comments »
Here’s another clip from Sunday’s episode, “Everything is Broken” where we see Sookie and Bill cleaning up after the werewolf attacks discussing what “normal couples” do.
By NotHoney on August 12th, 2010 at 4:15 am | 24 Comments »
UPDATE!Chow Now Pet Food will donate 10 percent from sales of Chow Now Chompz for dogs – available at the register at BOW!
Team Bill invites you to a fund raiser at Barrel Oak Winery in beautiful Delaplane, Virginia to raise money for GulfAid! If you live in the National Capital Area, or you know someone who does, please join us on August 15 from 1 to 5 p.m. for good wine, great company, beautiful views of the Virginia piedmont, and help us raise money for GulfAid.
Barrel Oak Winery is kid- and dog-friendly so bring them along! There are toys and water tubs outside for your canine friends, and lots of people bring picnics. Not to worry, BOW also serves some tasty snacks, including vegan and vegetarian, and keeps a jar of biscuits on hand for our four-legged buddies.
I’ll be there along with Aemac, so you can meet us or avoid us at your pleasure. We’re also hosting some very fine homemade baked treats for a nominal donation to GulfAid. Please join us!
Click to Enlarge, Y'all
Download the PDF version to print or send via e-mail to everyone you know!
By NotHoney on August 9th, 2010 at 6:21 am | 76 Comments »
Did you like the song that played during last night’s ep while Bill and Sookie had bloody, messy make up sex? It’s by Otep and titled “Head.” You can give a listen here and download it on Amazon and iTunes.
By NotHoney on August 6th, 2010 at 2:34 pm | 24 Comments »
We want to be inside SOOKIE, not be a COOKIE!
The Battle of the Fang is hotter than cookies fresh from the oven! Vampire Bill leads the contest for GulfAid but the Viking continues to threaten that lead! Please help keep Vampire Bill ahead by donating to GulfAid.
Bill: $10,593 Eric: $9,985
Remember, we need your ideas for the Battle of the Fang winner’s and loser’s T-shirts. Keep ‘em comin’!
The mainstream media still reports the lack of oil in the Gulf, which is mind-boggling when you read this report from Truthout which states government figures estimate “that 10 to 12 times the amount of oil had been flowing from the well than it originally thought.’
“New estimates released Monday by a government-led team of scientists found that as much as 62,000 barrels of oil were leaking from the well each day at its peak — far beyond the initial estimate of 5,000 barrels a day and more in line with what scientists told McClatchy it was.
The new estimates raise questions about whether the early response ever anticipated the disaster’s actual size and scope. The well gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels for nearly three months before BP put in place a temporary cap 18 days ago.
The government now estimates that 53,000 barrels were leaking each day before BP installed the cap. Only 800,000 barrels — about 16 percent of the total — was captured before flowing into the ocean.”
Here’s satellite imagery from NASA , taken last week, that clearly shows a giant oil slick in the Gulf:
More information about the effects of the oil and Corexit, the dispersant used to minimize the surface oil slick, comes forward via Huffington Post.
“Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them “in almost all” of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. — more than 300 miles of coastline — said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.’
And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon.”
The use of Corexit, revealed to be as toxic as the oil itself, may explain why some MSM are reporting a smaller oil slick in there “Where’s the oil?” stories:
“With BP’s well possibly capped for good, and the surface slick shrinking, some observers of the Gulf disaster are starting to let down their guard, with some journalists even asking: Where is the oil?’
But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it’s short- and long-term effects could be profound.”
This is an important story, especially if you prefer to eat marine wildlife without a dash of Corexit, or care about the continued health of marine ecosystems, so read the rest of it at HuffPo.
Thanks to all y’all for donating so often and so generously to the Battle of the Fang. We are daily amazed and delighted at your dedication and kind-heartedness.
REMEMBER! The EBay auction for the 
“Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them “in almost all” of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. — more than 300 miles of coastline — said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.’
