Now that Tipper Gore is in the news because of her divorce from the man who invented “took the initiative in creating” the interwebs, all I can think of are:

– this video of Jello Biafra pwning Tipper and her PMRC Crusade on The Oprah Winfrey show (turn up the volume; Harpo doesn’t want you to hear this),

– Bloom County’s Deathtongue being dragged before Tipper Gore and a horde of congressional wives, thus causing their change of band name to Billy & The Boingers, and

– Hilarious Duck | Tipper Gore To Be Inducted Into Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame

… if that wasn’t enough to inflame the rage of those that remembered Gore“s past as Public Enemy No. 1, Al Gore, himself, during his bid for the presidency in 2000, was, surprisingly enough, financially backed by such famous rock stars as Sheryl Crow, Joe Walsh, Stevie Nicks and Dweezil Zappa, son of one of Tipper Gore“s most outspoken opponents, Frank Zappa.

When asked why Tipper Gore was being inducted in the Rock ˜n“ Roll Hall of Fame, spokeswoman for the institution, Helen Gurchnecht, replied, “The Hall of Fame is going ‘green’ this year and there’s nothing more ‘green’ than the Gores. Rock ‘n’ Roll is no longer about playing loud, living fast and expressing yourself creatively. These days, it’s more about whether or not you bring your own shopping bag to the grocery store. Or if you decide to walk to church instead of taking the family SUV.

If you’re ever in Cleveland, visit the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and check out the Don’t Knock The Rock exhibit on musical free speech. Edit: Yes, Tipper Gore is referenced in it, but no, she wasn’t really inducted.

Ron Zappe, founder of Zapp’s Potato Chips, dies of throat cancer at 67

… his four companies went bankrupt during the 1980s oil bust and he moved from Houston to Louisiana and started a potato chip business.

… Mr. Zappe bought the former Faucheux Chevrolet dealership in Gramercy where he began making a thicker-cut, kettle-fried potato chip cooked in peanut oil.

I’m sure there’ s a moral in there somewhere, but I’m too busy stuffing my face with Cajun Crawtators. Have I ever told you about the time someone said these chips tasted like kettle chips with barbeque sauce and some old bay seasoning thrown in and I confiscated their bag? Heresy.

XKCD nails how I feel about media coverage of the oil disaster to date. If one of these talking heads, including politicians, were to ask a question or make commentary that didn’t sensationalize or relate back to a major party member’s re-election potential, the whole institution of Big Reporting would come apart at the seams, right?

Speaking of reporting, let’s get something straight:

True = efforts to kill/seal the well, i.e. Top Kill have failed
True = BP will not attempt the installation of a second blowout preventer.
False = efforts to contain the well are off the table until a relief well reaches the target in the reservoir in August.

Right now, as we speak, the portion of the riser above the existing blowout preventer is being sawed off (what you might see referred to as DSAW) for a nice clean attachment to a Lower Marine Riser Package cap, after the longest section of the riser away from the BOP was removed last evening. So, stop forwarding and/or retweeting the Bloomberg story and confusing yourselves and at The Oil Drum and Alexander Higgins’s blog instead.

In fact, for the very latest discussion of the current pre-LMRP video footage with engineers and scientists, The Oil Drum has been hosting a live webchat at webchat.freenode.net. Enter a name and #theoildrum as channel to join.

Live discussion of the video feed at FreeNode (Channel name: #theoildrum). It’s like watching the ADD-addled love child of Fark and the First Draft Crackvan, but stay with it. Like scattered tarballs from the oil volcano, bits of some of the most reliable information on the (pre-)LMRP operation make it to the surface.

For the best explanation of what BP is attempting this go-around, read this updated The Oil Drum post, complete with labeled diagrams of the riser-cutting process in preparation for the Lower Marine Riser Package cap. Yeah, the process that’s going to send a lot more oil gushing into the sea before they successfully (please) lower the LMRP cap onto it. Forgive me if the current plan is prepared for this contingency, but what if the LMRP cap procedure fails and the flow rate of oil into the ocean is then increased as a result of cutting off the kinks in the riser? They then figure out how to cap it again? With what?

Someone’s making anagrams of the words Lower Marine Riser Package Cap.