When last we checked in on Royal Dutch Shell’s “High Tech” Arctic drilling operation they were pretty hosed, eh?  Their containment unit was crushed like a beer can at half its designed operating depth on a clear sunny day in Puget Sound Washington.

Well the weather is not always so nice as that farther north and later in the season and the drilling rig Shell has been using, the Kulluk, and Aiviq the tug moving it to it’s winter quarters in Seattle from Dutch Harbor (famous from Deadliest Catch), ran into some.

Now what some people would call a ‘big storm’ is not so much by comparison to your typical gale, ask anyone who has lived in Maine or Syracuse (6″?  A dusting.  You don’t even get a snow day.).  This one was big enough though, 40′ seas and 70 mph winds.  Kulluk broke her tow and started drifting.  Then when they finally got a line on her again the engines on Aiviq went out, all of them.  Bad diesel they say.

So they called in the Coast Guard which was luckily enough based quite nearby on Kodiak Island instead of a thousand miles away like they would be during actual drilling and they were able to restart Aiviq and with the help of a couple of Cutters start towing again.

Monday, New Year’s Eve, they gave up on that and intentionally grounded Kulluk on the environmentally sensitive but uninhabited Sitkalidak Island near Kodiak Island with the intention of re-floating it and trying again when the weather moderated.

And it did, to a more typical 30′ swell and 35 mph breeze which the Coast Guard divers looked at and decided was maybe not as moderate as they needed to survive.

There it sits today, Wednesday, rocking gently back and forth on a sandy beach with no sign of leaking its 143,000 gallons of fuel or 12,000 gallons of lubricants and hydraulic fluid OR getting pounded to razor blades on the rocks depending on whether you believe Shell propoganda or not.

As always EdwardTeller @ Firedog Lake is on top of the story with these posts I highly recommend you read-

• Shell Oil’s Arctic Drilling Rig’s Tug in Gulf of Alaska Emergency – Shell Considering Evacuating Kulluk Crew Saturday December 29, 2012 2:04 pm
• Shell Drill Rig Kulluk Breaks Tow Lines – Adrift Again Sunday Night – Updated X 3 Sunday December 30, 2012 10:18 pm
• Kulluk Grounds – Spill Response "Ready to Go!" Monday December 31, 2012 9:37 pm
• Shell Oil Rig Kulluk Being Ground into Razor Blades on Rocky Alaska Beach. Questions Arise. Tuesday January 1, 2013 4:17 pm

But if you prefer corporate media instead of DFH Firebagger bloggers here’s a sample-

• Rig Runs Aground in Alaska, Reviving Fears About Arctic Drilling
  
  By JOHN M. BRODER and HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times
  
  Published: January 1, 2013

• Shell oil rig runs aground in Alaska
  
  By Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
  
  Jan 01, 2013 08:46 PM EST

• A Rig Accident off Alaska Shows the Dangers of Extreme Energy
  
  By Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine
  
  Jan. 02, 2013

• Shell drilling rig remains difficult to reach for rescue team
  
  Richard Mauer and Lisa Demer, McClatchy
  
  Wednesday, January 2, 2013

• Storm impedes salvage of drilling ship in Alaska
  
  Mary Pemberton, Associated Press
  
  7:17 a.m. EST January 2, 2013

• What Shell’s Kulluk Oil Rig Accident Means for Arctic Drilling
  
  By Jerry Beilinson, Popular Mechanics
  
  January 1, 2013 7:50 PM

That’s what you make by cutting an orange in half and scooping out the edible part so you can put fruit salad in it right?

Oh, you are so old school.

It used to mean something, now the parade isn’t even on TV (though they still drive around some of the floats at halftime).  This year’s competitors are Florida State vs. Northern Illinois.

Go Huskies!  Or maybe not, too much New Year.

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"

The networks race back to normalcy and I do also.  It takes a week to recover from the holidays.  I hope you all had one as good and safe as I did, see you next year!

This edition covers the 12 hours from 6 pm to 6 am.  Immediate gratification is here.  The previous edition is here.

Why is it the 99th?  Well the Parade started in 1895 and the Throwball game not until 1902.  Plus there are some missing years.

This year we see Stanford (Condi Rice’s place) facing Wisconsin (go Badgers!) for nothing but bragging rights the way it used to was.

Well, for those of you without TV as I was last year KTLA seems to have the best streaming web coverage-

• Rose Parade Stories
• Floats
• Bands

• Live Stream (you’ll need to have javascript enabled)

The Theme this year is Oh the places you’ll go, Ted Geisel’s last and most depressing book (Wikipedia be damned and Lorax and Sneetches not withstanding).

Oh- Wikipedia.

The Official Site

• Floats
• Bands
• Equestrians

The Order of March is below.  This is not necessarily the order you’ll see on TV where ABC, and HGTV start their coverage at 11 am and NBC follows at 11:30.  FamNet has a pre-parade with their coverage starting at 10:30 am.

I’m glad I’m not a member of Lafayette Band Pride of the Bluegrass.

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"

This will show me to close my eyes just when magical thinking and rooting could make a difference.  I’ll never change my socks again.

Sigh.

Today’s featured distractions are the 124th Rose Parade, the Rose Bowl, and the ‘Gator Bowl (drink named after the team and not the other way around).

This edition covers the 12 hours from 6 am to 6 pm.  Immediate gratification is here.  The previous edition is here.

If you have any sense at all you are already safely ensconced wherever you plan to celebrate and are preparing for riotous self-indulgence to celebrate the schadenfreude passing of a year memorable mostly for the milestones of decline into another dark age.

What is more threatening?  Global Thermonuclear War or Warming?

But warming sounds so fuzzy and cute.

Tell it to the Polar Bears, God-less killing machines that they are.  At least you used to be able to duck and cover and kiss your ass goodbye while praying to be fortunate among the blast radius so you’d avoid the dystopian barbarism descending as the Anthropocene Epoch comes to a close.

Shall I set you up again?

Anyway, traveling early and leaving late (tomorrow) allows the best chance of avoiding your own personal Mayan Apocalypse on Amateur Night and that’s one reason I’m disappointed in the entertainment offered.  Where are my Circuses Caesar?

After the Ball drops your best bets are Zombie Apocalypse (AMC), Mayan Apocalyse (National Geographic), Dr. Who so depressing I didn’t even bother to record it (BBCA), Futurama Rapture (Comedy), Julia Roberts whoring for Mitt Romney (Lifetime), and the Twilight Zone (SciFi).

Oh, and Kathy Griffin (Bravo).

You might want to stay snuggled up until tomorrow when we will be liveblogging The Rose Parade at 11 am.

Happy New Year!

This edition covers the 12 hours from 6 pm to 6 am.  Immediate gratification is here.  The previous edition is here.

If the austerity bomb goes off at midnight as seems likely at the moment, what excuse do Democrats use for continuing negotiations with this Congress?

The incoming Congress will be sworn in January 3rd, 3 days from now.  Democrats have gained 9 seats, though not a majority, in the House, and added 2 in the Senate.

The legislation set to expire January 1st will have expired.

Just what do they hope to accomplish in 3 days that they could not address at their leisure?

Someone less charitable than I would suggest that there are 2 other clocks running, one is on the fiction that Democrats are at a tremendous disadvantage and must accept any deal they can get from those dastardly (and make no mistake, they are dastardly) Republicans.

The other is on the fiction that the debt and defict really are increasing and require drastic cuts to our earned benefits and social insurance programs to solve.  Each day that passes reduces it even now and the trend will only accelerate with the expiration of the Bush/Obama tax cuts.

Yes, this is austerity and the economy as a whole will take a hit and many people will be negatively effected by cuts in government expenditures for domestic and military programs.

However it should make it painfully obvious that the problem is not deficts or debt at all but instead growth, employment, and income inequality.

In any event it is not the time to let up on the message that no deal is better than a bad one.

To The Phones

White House

202-456-1111

Your senators

Your House member.

No cuts to Social Security.

Gaius Publius @ Americablog offers this helpful digest-

What are we protecting?

We’re protecting three social insurance programs. These are:

    ¦ Social Security

    ¦ Medicare

    ¦ Medicaid

What are we protecting them from? Anything that:

    ¦ Reduces benefits

    ¦ Turns the program from insurance to welfare (which only the “deserving” have access to)

How are these programs being threatened?

As near as I can tell, these are the threats. Note to foxes – this is the hands-off list. Each of these seven items is a benefit cut:

Social Security

    1. Raising the retirement age

    2. Chained CPI instead of current COLA

    3. Means-testing benefits

Medicare

    4. Raising the eligibility age

    5. Increasing Part B premiums

    6. Increasing “cost-sharing”

Medicaid

    7. Shifting costs to the states by any means, such as “federal blended rate,” etc.

You can’t quite go all day watching the games, but here’s a list to get you started-

• noon ESPN– College Throwball (Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl: North Carolina State v. Vanderbilt)
• noon ESPN2– College Hoopies (Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh)
• 2 pm CBS– College Throwball (Hyundai Sun Bowl: Georgia Tech v. USC)
• 2 pm ESPN2– College Hoopies (Michigan State @ Minnesota)
• 3 pm ESPN– College Throwball (AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Iowa State v. Tulsa)
• 4 pm ESPN2– College Hoopies (Indiana @ Iowa)
• 6 pm ESPN2– College Hoopies (Gonzaga @ Oklahoma State)
• 7:30 pm ESPN– College Throwball (Chick-fil-A Bowl: Clemson v. LSU)
• 8 pm ESPN2– College Hoopies (Harvard @ St. Mary’s)
• 2 am ESPN2– College Throwball (Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl: North Carolina State v. Vanderbilt)
• 3:30 am ESPN– College Throwball (Chick-fil-A Bowl: Clemson v. LSU)
• 4 am ESPN2– College Throwball (AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Iowa State v. Tulsa)

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"

You should know the drill by now.  Marathons are 4 half hours or 3 hours.  I attempt to capture specials and ignore the really painful drek, but if you simply must look my source is Zap2it.

Links bring you to show and movie Wikipedia entries.  Look back at the previous entry for ultra long marathons that may have started more than 6 hours ago.  I might attempt consolidated sports listings, it’s hard to say.  One thing I’ve noticed is it’s not the holidays as it used to be.  There was a time when you would have to pick and choose between 17 different sporting events and New Year’s Eve Specials because everybody did one.  Now networks seem to try and keep as close to their normal schedule as possible.  I call it lazy programming.

Some of the countdowns and retrospectives have moved to the network cable news channels so you should check those out.

This edition covers the 12 hours from 6 am to 6 pm.