Decades ago, it must have started 60 or 70 years ago, the city of Santa Monica’s sewage treatment plant broke down for the last time and raw sewage once again poured out of the big pipe that emptied into the ocean. When they didn’t fix the problem, the state of California, or L.A. County, I’m not sure which, began fining them $10,000 a day, or maybe it was a week, for pouring all that foul, untreated crap into the ocean water.
It turned out that because the city had grown so big in population, and a new sewage treatment plant would have to be much bigger than the old one and cost a lot of money to build, maintain and operate, that it was actually cheaper to just keep paying the fine.
So the ocean water along the whole Southern California coast is now a brownish orange, the same color as, yep, you guessed it, and on all the fishing piers there’s lots of signs that say “DON’T EAT THE FISH”. Because the fish that you catch now off those piers are loaded with murderous bacteria. I went out on one of the piers once to look at the fish they were catching and man, those were the ugliest, nastiest looking fish I’d ever seen. I’m not sure what they were, some sort of foul little critters that can survive in pollution, that never used to live there before. The waters there used to be crystal clear, you could seen 30 feet down to the bottom on a sunny day and watch the fish and the crabs moving about, but they’re all dead and gone now because the city managers of Santa Monica were a pack of selfish, inconsiderate assholes who cared more about the city budget and their pet projects than they did about the environment and the millions of people sharing it.
Moving right along here, in other news today, I’m learning how to hobble and getting really good at it. I woke up this morning with my left calf sore as a boil and have no idea why, but I’m limping real good because of it. That’s the problem with an aging body. My brain is doing fine but the rest of the 82 year old me isn’t. I have COPD, from asbestos and other pollutants, and I already run out of breath pretty quick just walking up a gentle hill. I bought one of those doodads you put on your finger that reads your blood oxygen, and mine is 95 on a good day. 100 is normal. Yesterday it hit 89 and started flashing at me, because that’s a danger zone. If your blood oxygen level goes down too much, your heart beats faster to pump more blood to make up for it, and that can cause a heart attack. I may be a candidate for one of those oxygen generators that you see on peoples hips, with a little tube ending in a nose clip, before long.
Then there’s all the gassing up that’s been going on, belching, farting and tap dancing like a true Tralfamadorian, along with tremors starting to develop in both arms, and my right eye is going south. So with all that going on, I’ve had to admit the truth, that my plan to live forever may have to be put on hold or even abandoned.
That would be a shame because I was really looking forward to seeing human colonies on the Moon, Mars and the La Grange points in space and that may not happen. Of course, if it does and I miss it, I won’t care. Hard to care, when you’re not there.