A Day at the Beach

I was really, really excited to go to the beach today. I'd only been swimming once this year, on a day when it was really too cold to be swimming, so I was looking forward to spending some time in the water, if for no other reason than to spend some time not thinking about the problems we're having in other bodies of water around the world *cough*gulf*cough*. We drove to Turkey Point, stopping at a nice little cafe for cheeseburgers along the way (I shouldn't eat cheese, I know, but I love it too much) and arrived happy, if a little confused by the relative lack of activity on the beach. We parked the car and by the time we reached the actual sand, the calm of the beach was starting to make sense; it smelled absolutely foul. At first, we thought it was just where we were, gasses from a nearby stormdrain or something, so we moved. We moved twice before we decided that no, it really was the water. No matter, we thought, we would just sit on the beach and enjoy ourselves and try to ignore the overpowering stench blowing in off the water.

There were these neat little birds by the water, all black with white eyes, and I decided that I was going to sneak up on one and get a picture, so off I went. The smell from the water was awful, but I figured I would brave it. The bird flew away before I could even get it in focus, but the closer I got to the water, the more I realized that the little bits of drifwood and garbage floating on the waves were neither driftwood nor garbage. They were fish. A lot of fish.

Combine that with the thick, purplish haze hanging in the otherwise clear blue sky and you have what I consider to be a fairly horrifying situation. Add the fact that thousands of barrels worth of oil are spewing into the gulf of Mexico per day, that given their history, the situation on any given day is likely to be 1,000 times worse than BP is willing to admit, and I'm pretty sure we have the first sign of Armageddon. Lucky us.

What's really awful is that I've had a horrible feeling about this whole oil leak business for days, horrible, as in: time to pack up and head for the mountains - and I've been telling myself that I'm being paranoid or overreacting or something. Then I get to the beach and see this. We really are all going to die.