Western Civilization Has Replaced the Post Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Genre: July

Everything is crazy. There is a new oil spill in the Kalamazoo River that threatens to become “a tragedy of historic proportions,” says Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, if it reaches Lake Michigan. Already said to be one of the biggest oil spills in the Midwest, estimates at the volume of oil in the river—leaked from a pipeline owned by some Canadian firm—are at one million gallons.

The leak’s reported to have been contained but there have already been disturbingly sci-fi, post apocalyptic, biblical-downfall-of-civilization effects: “My eyes were burning, and my nose was burning,” said Rachel Campbell, a pregnant women who lives about six blocks from the river and was woken up at 3 AM this morning by the smell and problems breathing. “It smelled like a diesel tanker had turned over in front of my house.”

Jesus. Meanwhile, someone in Barcelona has recently had his entire face transplanted. Not sure where they got the extra face. Here, see if you can pick out which one got the face transplant:

Poor guy. It’s cool, though, that Arizona’s SB 1070 ruling yesterday has disallowed Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies from, among other terrible provisions, pulling over and checking the status of anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant (read: Arizona wanted to codify racism), but I feel like it’s really not cool that some dude that heads a militia of armed white suburbanites that patrol the Arizona border for immigrants in military fatigues and body armor, carrying gas masks and assault rifles even exists. Here’s a link to a video where said dude repeats “We will kill them,” referring to those they catch trying to cross the border.

Honestly seems bizarre. Today we also have California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a state of fiscal emergency for the State of California. In response he’s issued an ‘edict’ that all state employees shall have 3 unpaid days off per month, starting in August (oh shit… that’s in two days), and a statement that warned of “fiscal meltdown” and the state government completely running out of money if he isn’t presented with a budget that doesn’t address California’s $19 billion shortfall soon. Damn.

Lastly, world population is expected to top 7 billion this year, which I guess means that in 15-20 years we’re going to be living in a world where there are 14 billion people? Do I have that right?

Keep watching the news for the aliens to make first contact, the entire internet to be censored globally, new species of monsters to be discovered in sewers, the Tea Party to lead an armed revolution in the country’s major metropolitan areas, the Bloop to start ‘happening’ again, mutant alligators, the outbreak of a full-scale border war in Arizona, famine, terrorism, and large scale, thoughtless annihilation.