Frickless Frack Skating on Thin Ice

The much anticipated divine event of having your naked ass hauled up to heaven, as foretold by Harold Camping, seems to have fizzled - twice.

But....let us not forget that the supposed prophecy of an Apocalypse by the Mayan soothsayers is scheduled for 2012. We are almost there.

After listening to Brian Williams' new show last night which featured an implied go-west-poor-man urging to get jobs galore in North Dakota where fracking is one of the newest insults to the planet, I am beginning to attribute some veracity to the belief that we are nearing the end.

Surely everyone knows now what fracking is. Driving some force...air, water, gas - all under pressure - deep into the ground (in this case, two miles down)... to dislodge and liquify all the oil-containing shale going to waste as just part of the earth's composition, structured over eons.

I believe the billionaire oilman, who is  overseeing and perhaps financing the "project," said 60 billion barrels of oil await our eager gas tanks, plastic dishware factories and divers other industries panting to convert this liquid gold  into stuff that poisons our air and our water, but helps to see we are never inconvenienced in any way.

The availability of jobs, even in North Dakota, sounds good - very  good, since they said they were looking, among other things, for 500 truck drivers, a job most men and women can do.

But "very good news" can sometimes mean unintended consequences are part of the package.

North Dakota is a whoop and a holler from Wyoming. It is, in fact, essentially juxtaposed to Yellowstone Park,  home of Old Faithful - the geyser known worldwide for its uncanny predictability and to its attachment to even greater forces that lie unseen beneath the surface. Probably two miles beneath the surface.

Yellowstone Park is a disaster waiting to happen. Don't believe me. Check it out here:

http://survival.outdoorlife.com/blogs/survivalist/2011/03/yellowstone-caldera-disaster-waiting-happen

Additionally, I found an ominous-sounding observation from someone posting on thedailykitten.com describing a 1959 earthquake in Yellowstone, felt in North Dakota:

"The one and only earthquake I ever felt was the Yellowstone Earthquake in 1959. And I was north of Dickinson, North Dakota, reading in bed at the time. At first I thought something was underneath the bed so I looked. Nope, no ogre there.

"Then I thought the heifers must have gotten out and were rubbing against the house. Looked out the window, no cows. Earthquake never occurred to me. Was totally mystified until the next morning when we heard the news on the radio. My parents and brother slept through it, and didn't believe me until we heard the news!"

Read it and worry. And remember, all you frackers, it's not safe to piss off Mother Nature.

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