{"id":1021,"date":"2012-06-25T09:39:53","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T13:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summerofjim.com\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2012-06-25T09:39:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T13:39:53","slug":"cranial-fracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/?p=1021","title":{"rendered":"Cranial Fracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are gems, and then there are the real<\/em> gems.\u00a0 This is from a New Yorker<\/em>‘s “Shouts & Murmurs” section written by Ian Frazier. I love this type of\u00a0elaborate, detail filled comedy writing.<\/p>\n

CRANIAL FRACKING <\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, I signed a lease with a major oil company allowing it to begin \u201ccranial fracking\u201d \u2013 deep drilling to tap the vast reserves of natural gas found in the human head.\u00a0 These reserves are not distributed uniformly in all individuals.\u00a0 In my case, however, a gas-rich formation known as the Jersey Deposit runs from behind my eyebrows to beneath my bald spot and then angles downward to the point of my chin.\u00a0 According to the prospecting crews, this cranial structure holds enough CH4 (methane) to power all ofNew Englandfor twenty to fifty years.\u00a0 When this bonanza was discovered, oil-company representatives came to me hoping to lock in permanent and exclusive extraction rights for a fee that was truly eye-popping (although that may also have been a result of seismic \u201cthumper trucks\u201d they used).<\/p>\n

As the details were explained, I wished I had paid more attention during the brief cranial section of my earth-sciences classes in high school.\u00a0 Apparently, back in the Silurian period, some four hundred and thirty-eight million years ago, my head was completely covered by a shallow inland sea.\u00a0 In time the sea receded and a swampy Carboniferous growth sprang up.\u00a0 In the resultant ooze, distinct parietal ridges appeared, trapping some of the carbon.\u00a0 Ages passed, I was officially born, there was the difficult year in kindergarten, and very slowly, under extreme pressure, valuable gas was formed.\u00a0 I have suspected its existence since about the fourth grade.\u00a0 I was hammering a nail into my nostril, just to see what would happen, as kids will do, when suddenly there was a tremendous explosion that sent the nail and the hammer flying and injured a neighbor in his yard across the street.\u00a0 After that, I knew that I was different, although I wasn\u2019t sure that I wanted to be.\u00a0 But now like thousands of similar people, I count myself lucky to possess this resource.<\/p>\n

Getting at it has always been the hard part.\u00a0 With some guys (and most of those whose heads contain the Jersey Deposit formation are men, curiously), a gas seep rises clear to the surface of the head.\u00a0 Then all that the extraction workers have to do is part the hair (where there is hair) and screw in a well cap and valve directly into the skull.\u00a0 With me and others like me, however \u2013 no so easy.\u00a0 First, entry sites must be established just at the front of each ear, where the overburden is shallow and the head is narrowest.\u00a0 Then multidirectional diamond-tipped drills bore through the obstructing bone until they reach the remote inner levels, where the richest concentrations of gas lie hidden.\u00a0 Often, this is a hit-or-miss process.\u00a0 A moment\u2019s inattention on the part of the drilling technician, who is sitting in his apartment and also checking his e-mail, can cause mistakes.\u00a0 The bit may emerge unexpectedly, scattering skull fragments, and plunge onward through one\u2019s hat or glasses, as has happened on more than one occasion to me, I am sorry to say.<\/p>\n

Quite honestly, the whole process hurts like bloody hell.\u00a0 After the drill has reached the gas deposits, contained in thousands of tiny pockets no more than a few molecules across, the surrounding bone must be microscopically shattered to free them.\u00a0 This is done by backing out the drill, taping on a small firecracker, lighting it, shoving it back in the well bore, and shouting, \u201cFire in the hole!\u201d\u00a0 After a muffled sound, smoke comes out, sometimes accompanied by bits of teeth and brain lining, depending on how accurately the charge has been shaped.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to tell you that this is the moment when I must keep our country\u2019s energy future in mind in order to withstand this horrible agony.\u00a0 Also, unavoidably, some of the gas escapes before the well can be capped and hooked into the distribution network.\u00a0 Cranial gas is itself a very potent agent of climate change, and my own, as it turns out, is considerable worse than most.<\/p>\n

A stream of surfactant at very high p.s.i. is then shot back into the well bore to flush it, and then the fluid is sealed up permanently in skull chambers, sometimes causing temporary dizziness and nausea.\u00a0 This fluid-containment system insures that nothing will ever come out, although in the unlikely (but not uncommon) event that it does migrate into your mouth, it tastes like pineapple.\u00a0 Reports have said that a flammable facial exudate possibly also results from this process, though no connection has been found.<\/p>\n

Until the past few years, none of the technologies I\u2019ve described were available.\u00a0 If you had a head full of top-grade crude, you simply went to the squasher and, 0ne-two, you were done.\u00a0 Back then nobody bothered about utilizing other cranial hydrocarbons, because there was no need.\u00a0 Today, the equipment is so sophisticated that it can find a single molecule of gas in a head of almost solid bone, like Senator Inhofe\u2019s.\u00a0 However, I am no blind to the controversies \u2013 that is, when the pumping mechanism is working properly and I am not blind for other reasons.\u00a0 I know that people have made negative comments, which are right, but they are not the ones who know about this personally and are getting paid.\u00a0 Yes, everything now tastes like pineapple to me, and there\u2019s the pain, and I have these Christmas-tree valve arrays that make it impossible to fly on air-planes, and my pores combust spontaneously if I don\u2019t keep the moistened towels on, but I recommend the procedure without reservation.<\/p>\n

The only thing I would say is, if you are thinking of putting your signature on the cranial-gas lease agreement, it\u2019s best to wait until your kids are grown and out of the house.\u00a0 If you have a spouse or domestic partner, separate, and obtain a divorce if necessary.\u00a0 You will want to spend all your time in a corrugated-metal building with an oil-soaked earthen floor.\u00a0 Find a good oil-patch lawyer and have him begin proceeding against you as a preventative measure.\u00a0 Direct wire transfer of lease monies to the Caymans is the only way to go.\u00a0 And here\u2019s a secret: guy wires.\u00a0 Attached from your head to the building\u2019s rafters, they provide neck support that feels wonderful.\u00a0 You will thank me down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are gems, and then there are the real gems.\u00a0 This is from a New Yorker‘s “Shouts & Murmurs” section written by Ian Frazier. I love this type of\u00a0elaborate, detail filled comedy writing. CRANIAL FRACKING Recently, I signed a lease … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ministry-of-jokes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}