Oh, hey, here's another thing that sucks:

Turns out there's "a virulent pox on the world's oceans."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,6670018,full.story

It seems that the weird, ancient wannabes that preceeded all us multicellular cool kids are making a comeback. They're laying seige to the oceans, killing off fish and seals and what not and making life hell for fisherfolk the world over.

The L.A. Times says, Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. And what can unchecked jellyfish lead to? Try nuclear power plant malfunction!

The L.A. Times says, We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution.

The L.A. Times says... look, I'm sorry, I know I'm going overboard with the splash quotes no pun intended, but the whole article is a dang splash quote. And I'm not doing that thing where you take the most incendiary paragraph and split it up into nine separate splash quotes. I am telling you there is enough freakish one-celled-organism mayhem out there to provide a solid three or four pages of pure D horror! And the worst part? At the top of the article, in little bitty words, it says... part one!

Look at this:
"It's like acid," Tanner said. "I couldn't believe it. It kept pulling the skin off."

and this:
"We checked this 20 times. It was mind-boggling. It was like 'The Blob.' "

and this:
"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

and this:
we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

Well, gol! Say, why's all that stuff happening, anyhow?

Well, continues the ever helpful L.A. Times, 'cause Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

So if after all my cut'n'paste slavery you still want to skip the article, basically the story goes like this: we took all the cool stuff out of the ocean and ate it, and then we crapped in the ocean. Now there's no more cool stuff in the ocean and all the creepy stuff in the ocean is getting fat off our crap.

What can we do about our crap? Maybe nothing. If we don't see a reason to do anything about it, nothing for sure. Maybe we'll just go on crapping until we crap ourselves out. But if we do want to do something, it's at least possible we may be able to reduce our output enough to make a slight difference.

How? Well, one way to reduce your load of crap is to stop supporting corporate agriculture. Don't buy food unless you know who grew it and unless you trust that they grew it right. It's a simple and appealing maxim: buy from people you're pretty sure won't throw crap in the sea. More simple and appealing yet,

Stay out of the grocery store.

Today's Blip!
A good book to read is The Ethical Gourmet. Read the fish section so that you'll know what species we're gorging on to the detriment of ourselves and to the benefit of the rising tide of slime.