Published: March 09, 2011
Op-Ed Contributor
Dead Fish in Redondo Beach and Charlie Sheen: What Does It All Mean?
By Robert Paul Reyes
"Californian officials have expressed worries about the health hazards posed by the rotting carcasses of a million sardines that washed up at a coastal harbour. The Redondo Beach marina, around 20 miles south of Los Angeles, was swamped by the sardines as they sought to escape adverse weather conditions.
A California fish and wildlife department spokesman, Andrew Hughan, said there were no traces of poisons or other noxious pollutants in the King Harbor Marina. He added that officials believed, as sardines were confused easily, that they had simply run out of oxygen while trying to find their way out again." Read MoreThere are some weird things going on in Los Angeles that may portend the end of the world. I'm not referring to the Charlie Sheen sideshow -- the troubled actor is performing a community service by providing comic relief from the intractable problems that we face as a nation.
It's the rotting carcasses of the millions of sardines in the Redondo Beach marina that trouble me. The unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, and the Charlie Sheen meltdown may have grabbed all the headlines the last couple of months, but the phenomenon of dead fish and dead birds continues unabated.
Not even the wealthy yacht owners in Redondo Beach can escape from this Biblical scourge of dead fish. Dead birds rained down from heaven over Arkansas on New Year's Eve -- three months later if you search for "dead birds" or "dead fish" on Google News you will still get hundreds of hits.
Volunteers and officials have begun collecting the dead sardines in nets. The carcasses of the fish will be transported to a waste ground site, where they will be used to produce fertilizer.
Given all the weirdness that is taking place as we approach 2012, is it surprising that we refuge in the entertaining mental disintegration of Charlie Sheen?
Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes
Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.
* The views of Opinion writers do not necessarily reflect the views of NewsBlaze
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