Macondo oil well given the plug; Inhabitants in the town of the same name irate

In the viscous wake of said “worst” environmental disaster in the United States, guilty yet valuable resource Macondo oil well has been tried and convicted by the American justice system. Because of the nature of an oil well, a life sentence in San Quentin penitentiary was put on hold for Macondo to find a more reasonable punishment. Scientist have devised a plug to put over the gaping hole in the sea bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, much like a cork you would place over an exploding bottle of champagne. This champagne, quite similar to the kind you find in sexy bottles during the holidays, left equal amounts of intoxication, anger, resentment and confusion.

The disaster, without saying, has left a bad taste in the world’s mouth. Especially for the fictional town of Macondo, whose name has been saturated with the dirty smear campaign of environmentalists, fishermen and Californians. Macondo, made famous by Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, hopes to clean up the rumors that they had anything to do with the bad news.

“It’s not fair that some negligent management on an oil rig has caused us such infamy to Macondo. BP is located in London and the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We only exist in the hearts and minds of Marquez’s readers,” said Macondo mayor and town founder José Arcadio Buendía. “People should really get their facts straight.”

Since the accident, tourism to the area has plummeted. Regular visitors like gypsies, the gringo, ghosts and even hurricanes have neglected to make their appearance after the announcement that 11 workers were killed and 200 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf. As of now, scientists have found no connection to the fictional town and the BP-owned oil well.

Only a half a year after the spill, interest in the disaster has declined dramatically. Media outlets have found they acquire more web hits when reporting on Tea Party activity and the whereabouts of Natalie Portman than on the spill’s aftermath. When negative words like “kill” and “disaster” were once used to describe the event, “investors” and “profits” now replace them. BP is headed back to its seat on the pedestal of profit, and the town of Macondo is believed to follow. Most are expecting the events, like the dense petroleum in the gulf, to wash over in a couple months.

Never give up

Do you ever sit - after absorbing more negative news reports about political fraud and corruption than your spongy form can handle - and wonder if the system is a reparable one? Does the scratching of backs and filling of pockets seem so rooted in our everyday lives that to fix one thing would mean to chop down the whole tree? Were we meant to remain in a discontented state so as to keep working, keep striving for a better tomorrow? And if we were to reach this hypothetical utopia, what then?

Alan Watts says, "we could have no poor without the rich, no good without the bad. One could simply not exist without the other. " So to be content is to accept that these "bad" things just are, even if they aren't just. But reading that the CEO has been lying to the shareholders who have earned false profits from the broker who once advised the politician whom I voted for, I find myself had, confused and penniless.

Young energetic educated somethings scream at the thick white walls that represent liberty and freedom but only seem to produce disappointment. They yell that its their world now, and this system that was administered to them year after year from text books doesn't seem to work as well as their teachers told them it should.

What is the purpose, then, to have lied to us all along, just so we can find out certain truths that make us wonder if we can opt out of the whole damn thing? Sure, the eye of the pyramid benefits from the ignorance of the masses, but are humans disposed to our own self-annihilation? The faults of this system will certainly be its own downfall, and I it strains me to figure out if we are most certainly doomed not to fix it.

To be successful in this modern world, it is more beneficial to learn something like advertising or political science than to dive into the fine arts, music or literature. It is the art of manipulation that is master, and even if we know this we fall victim.

Once I removed myself from a world of made up numbers and colorful pictures and bright shiny objects I found myself at ease... and quite bored. As if my DNA has been altered by the technological imperatives, over-consumption, TV screen-over-the-eyes state of the union, I couldn't imagine my life without distraction. Give me a lobotomy and pump me with Adderall, doc, for I won't survive the unplug. Maybe I'll just start drinking.

In no way am I proposing the white flag of surrender. Our society is only interesting when the anarchists strike the corporation, when the donkeys fight the elephants, when David walks up to Goliath in a new understanding of his existence and says, "Fuck you, Giant." Lest forgetting the perversion of truth in our present world, I'd like to root everyone on. Keep it up and enjoy the ride, because there is no life without the chance of death.