Saturday, November 3, 2012

Nationwide fame and stardom

Well, I'm not going to link to it, because they used my full name for some reason, and said that I was a US Marine, not a merchant mariner, but ABC news did a piece on dealing with submerged vehicles around NY/NJ, and my truck, may it rest in peace, made the news, mostly because I complained to anyone who would listen that there just wasn't a way for me to get from where we're moored to where the truck is parked. If you're a facebook friend, you can check it there. If you're not, you should be.

 At any rate, a reporter read my whining on here, and now I'm a celebrity. Snooki who? She is so last week.
 PaulB. is the new hotness of digital media. If I knew that I was going to be labeled as "US Marine Capt. PaulB," though, I would have tried to parlay that into an admiralty. If you're going to get promoted because no one knows the difference between a marine and a merchant mariner, might as well go for flag rank. "First Sea Lord PaulB" has a plenty pleasant ring to it.


 In the meanwhile, though, there are signs of life in the refining and oil terminal world. Gasoline is starting to flow, and diesel, too, I think. Black oil, however, is not the new hotness, which is part of the problem. Myself and my neighbors here at the dock are sitting on a couple of thousand tons of cold black oil, which is just about solid enough to walk across when it's ambient temp in November. We've got to get somebody to pump screaming hot oil into our tanks to blend with our cold oil so that we can pump it into a shore tank to be reheated, then we can take on some hot oil ourselves to give to thirsty ships and powerplants. The guys behind us, however, are fully loaded with cool oil. If they don't get it out in the next day or two, I have no idea how they'll get the solidified slurry out.

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Yesterdays' post earned me a few boos in my emailbox, too. As explained in the comments section, I probably should have fleshed out my thinking a little. I feel terrible for the people who lost everything this past week, and for their sakes, I'm glad to see FEMA here with the free ice cream machine. It seems to me, though, that there are proportionately more strident and loud people who have merely been INCONVENIENCED by the hurricane, and are unwilling to put scuff marks on their $200 sneakers to walk a little ways to get food, and are just squatting in front of their perfectly sound but powerless residences screaming for a microphone and a forum until their iPhones work. Those are the people that keep folks like me from wanting to do more. I will not help up someone who is perfectly able to help themselves but refuses, and, unfortunately, they're the ones who have the time and desire to get in line and open up their mouths for Mama Bird.gov to vomit free stuff into their voluminous EBT card-lined stomachs.  At any rate, the people sitting in the charred or sand-filled ruins of their homes are being cut out and subsumed by loudmouths who are happily willing to sit in line for 2 hours for the chance to complain on TV how no one is working hard enough to help them. If they were forced to actually work or even walk for 2 hours to get food for their families, they'd be too tired to bitch quite so loudly, and the folks who really need our help might get it.


7 comments:

SAW said...

The latest "journalism" paradigm strives to include blogs, tweets, and the rest of the social media phenomena in the reportage cycle. Ultimately, it's a great way to get other people to do reporters' jobs. So watch it, cause everybody is watching. As for the Marine Captain thing, after 9/11 I got interviewed for my former home-town, small-town newspaper since I'd just moved to northern Virginia and was nearby the Pentagon when the dirty deed got done. I was quoted as saying that after the attacks there were M-16s flying through the sky.
Your media: Fifty percent wrong most of the time. They mispelled my name, too, so there's that.

SAW said...

Ah, I found the story. They love it when members of the military suffer, don't they?

bigsoxfan said...

Hey, send me a request on FB once you get heated up and time, please. I'm on my phone and my search tech can't dig you out of the FB woodwork. Mark Scease, I'm the only one.

Paul, Dammit! said...

Saw- sage advice, and I will try harder to be smarter. The M-16 quote had me laughing!

Borepatch said...

PaulB. is the new hotness of digital media.

I have it on good authority that hot formerly-Brazilian chicks dig him.

Anti Money Laundering said...

I always salute those good military people for their humanitarian act.

Anonymous said...

You are right about the focus being on those who are inconvenienced rather than those who truly need help. I liked the stories of those who were suffering because they lost vacation property on the Jersey Shore. Yes, it is a loss (most likely protected by insurance). But, they still had a roof over their head.