2010- The Best Year In Safety.

"Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we

achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our

total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate... As 

measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our

Company's history."

What Transocean Ltd. is trying to say is that the year in which it annihilated the Gulf of Mexico (they owned the Deepwater Horizon rig), turning it into a black smear visible from space, was their best year in safety. Ever.  Is anyone else as confused as I am by this?  If last year was their best year, what in the hell was their worst year?

  

It's truly a company that does nothing but look on the bright side of things, isn't it?  "Well, Tim, we officially wiped out every thinking organism in a good portion of the world's ocean, of which we as humans depend on for sustenance and water, as well as killed eleven of our employees... but look at the bright side!  Fuel costs almost $4 a gallon!  Those little peons are practically throwing money at us!"

Delusions aside, what really pisses me off about this isn't that the executives seem to be living in some kind of fantasy land.  No, no.  If that's all this post was about, even I'd quit reading about now.  No, what really pisses me off is that the executives of Transocean Ltd. have declared 2010, the year of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster (you remember - the one where the hole kept throwing up oil for, oh, I don't know, three months), their safest year, and are giving themselves bonuses for it.

"It Couldn't Have Happened To A Better Country."

My thoughts go out to the people of Japan.  May you

all find strength in the face of this disaster. 

The great and talented Aldous Huxley once said, "If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves."  Cynical? Yes.  Depressing?  Absolutely.  True?  One hundred percent.  In the past couple of weeks, I have found myself looking around and just wanting to clock someone right in the face.  Day after day, I am subjected to idiocy on a scale that makes me wonder if Mother Nature is just pissed at us for being collectively stupid.  

Case in point: A man walked into the gas station I now work at for the weekend paper early Saturday morning.  He picked up the local bundle, and glanced at the headline as he placed it on the counter.  With a smile, he told me, "It couldn't have happened to a better country."  I looked down and saw the image of a Japanese soldier with a civilian over his shoulder, stumbling away from certain disaster.  My heart sank as I realized that he was talking about the 8.9 quake that had hit Japan.  I couldn't help myself.  "What do you mean?" "Payback for Pearl Harbor," he said like it was obvious.  Before I could even respond, he put two dollars on the counter and walked out.  

This, I think, was a good move on his part.  I was more than willing to risk losing my job in order to strangle a middle aged man that had clearly failed history class.  I am a bit peeved that I missed such a glorious opportunity, so maybe one day he'll stumble on this blog of my and read my following response: