Parrothead Ramblings

As I was watching the most bizarre weather patterns in memory to hit this part of the planet, I thought of a story. Imagine that.

Let's say you're up on a ladder one day, painting your house. You're breezing right along, because you're using "Acme Super Kote 2112" paint, guaranteed to cover your hacienda in one easy coat. And, you got it on sale, half-price. It's about then that some guy in a white lab coat shows up with a clipboard and some fancy looking test equipment. He tells you he's a research scientist from, oh I dunno, let's say someplace really impressive, like Johns Hopkins University. This guy tells you he has spent the last decade studying "Acme Super Kote 2112." He advises you to stop using it immediately! Well, he looks pretty smart in that lab coat, except for that one little chunk of quiche on the lapel, and he has some bad-ass credentials, so you start listening. He tells you he has found that this paint leaches through stucco and gets into the inner wall of your home. Once there, it then reacts with some preservative in the wood framing to create an invisible, odorless, gas. This gas can build up inside the wall until some ignition source, like an electrical arc, finds and ignites it, burning your home to the ground. Your scientist then explains this whole process takes time - maybe as long as 5-25 years - to occur. You need to act now to remove the paint, at great expense, and repaint it with something a bit more friendly.

"My God!" you shout, "why didn't those profiteering dirt bags at Acme tell me about this when I bought this crap?" So you get on the horn to Acme and commence chewing ass. Acme sends out its own research scientist, a guy from MIT. He's just as impressive as the first guy, except he has a bit of clam chowder on his lapel. He tells you that the first guy is an idiot, using "junk science" and bad research just to get you to spend more money. Yes, there's some gas buildup in your walls, and the walls of other homes with Acme paint, but it's not the paint doing it. It's occurring naturally. It's happened in houses before, and the gas has escaped harmlessly to the outside. You have nothing to worry about. Just keep slathering on that Acme paint and sleep well at night. Besides, it could take twenty years to build up to a harmful level, anyway. Hell, you won't even own this Taj Mahal in twenty years. It'll be someone else's problem. "Hey," you ask the good doctor, "Aren't you being paid by Acme?" He concedes that's true, but no way does their fifty-gazillion dollar research grant color his findings. So to speak.

What to do, Parrotheads? Do you decide neither of these eggheads know what the bejeezus they are talking about, kick 'em out of your yard, finish painting, and go in and watch the baseball game? That's undertandable.

As for me, I take the crap off my house. I don't take the chance that rocket scientist #1 is right and rocket scientist #2 follows the cash. And I tell my political leaders to stop screwing around with matches when our collective heads are in the oven. They need to tell those corporate turd blossoms over at Acme to stop putting that stuff on our houses until we know for sure just what the risks are. What if these chicken littles turn out to be right? What if the hokey-pokey is all it really is about?
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