Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Big oil companies, and their political lackeys in Congress, are always going on about how oil spills aren’t very common. But then, oops, reality comes along, as it did yesterday for the Contango Oil company, which had to shut down 6 oil wells when one of its pipelines started leaking petroleum into the Atchafalaya River down in Texas.

Never worry. It’s a rare thing. Really.

A couple of weeks ago, Irregular Times noted that there was a large oil spill along the Gulf Coast in Texas. What this site did not reveal, however, was the celebrity connection. Apparently, Irregular Times believes that it’s above that sort of journalism.

In this case, that snobbery caused Irregular Times to miss an amazing story – one that is only being hinted at by Houston Chronicle today in an article with the headline Sheen lingers 2 weeks after Port Arthur oil spill.

A Sheen is lingering this oil spill – but which Sheen, and why? Clearly, it’s not Martin Sheen. He’s always been responsible. Apparently, the Houston Chronicle doesn’t believe that it has enough corroborating sources to go fully public with the story yet, but we all know who it is. It’s the Sheen who’s always getting in trouble: Charlie Sheen. If there’s any Sheen who would linger around the scene of a disaster, it’s Charlie Sheen.

The question we now need to ask ourselves is: Why? All we need to do is follow the smell of oil to the next Charlie Sheen story to find the answer. On Friday, it was reported that Charlie Sheen’s SUV was found crashed at the bottom of a cliff – and it was empty. There was no sign of any blood, or struggle, on the inside. How could that have happened?

The truth seems clear: Charlie Sheen knows something about the oil spill in Texas, something that none of the rest of us have been told about. Charlie is on the trail of a truth that’s thick, dark, and oozing slime. Someone sent Charlie’s SUV flying down into a ravine as a warning that he had better back off – or else.

We don’t know for sure where Charlie Sheen is now – off in some mysterious place along the Texas Gulf Coast, hiding out, waiting for them to arrive for the final showdown, lingering until the moment of truth. We can only trust that Sheen will get to the bottom of this slick enigma, as surely as his SUV got to the bottom of that cliff.

Go, Charlie, go!

The hotel I’m staying in for my visit to Austin, Texas provides the following note along with a pair of earplugs:

Thank you for choosing the Hilton Garden Inn when staying in Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World.”

While we cannot control the music we would like to provide you with this complimentary amenity to help ensure a good nights rest.

We hope this will make your stay more comfortable.

The thing is that, for as long as I’ve been here, I haven’t heard any loud music outside my hotel window. What I do hear is the sound of highway traffic, droning on, and on, and on. Loud highways seem to be the real sound of Austin.

I was deeply disturbed to read this afternoon that Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston was an official stop on the Hillary Clinton for President campaign today. Every time I see Joel Osteen, with his insincere smile and gospel of divinely sanctioned wealth, I feel dirty. The man is so slick he fairly drips with snake oil, leaving a trail behind him as he leaves his stadium for Jesus.

Hillary Clinton’s political advisors might want to consider: If you win the Democratic nomination through an appeal to the followers of hucksters like Osteen, you’ll do so without the respect of many Democratic voters outside the Bible Belt. Of course, Democratic politicians have been campaigning on a neglect of Democratic voters for a long time, and getting away with it.

Maybe Clinton’s advisors have calculated that the number of Democrats repulsed by the connection with Osteen will be made up for by the number of evangelical Republicans impressed by it. Within Texas, of course, a Democrat is merely a Republican who has trouble pronouncing the “R” sound, so I suppose the Bible thumping will play well there.

There’s an interesting story about people seeing lights in the sky in Texas. Some say that they’re alien space ships. Others say that they saw military jets chasing the lights.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, is on the scene, “investigating”. Helpfully, Kenneth Cherry, the leader of the Texas chapter of MUFON, announced to reporters that “We believe there is some sort of phenomenon in action here.”

What an expert opinion. A phenomenon? A phenomenon in action?

You mean that something happened?

Thanks for the insight, MUFON. We none of us could have figured that out. Keep up the good work.

Thanks to the Associated Press too, for reporting that essential insight.