I have gotten drunk from time to time and I’ve said and done some things I would take back. But I’ve never quite been as wasted as the union pipefitters who voted to cancel the XL Pipeline and lost their jobs as a result.

Apparently they woke up on the couch soaked in piss. That could make anyone upset, and they said so. Yeah, we can see you’re upset, and we can see why. Soaked in piss.

But wait! There’s more! Here’s how we’ll dry out those piss-soaked pants and get you back on the job! Since you’re in the general business of mineral extraction, that means you’re a qualified Miner! And as a Miner you can pursue exciting new opportunities removing expired ordnance from ancient battlefields. That’s right, those things are called mines, and you’re a Miner. It’s the same word, so go dig up mines, complainer.

Seriously.

UPDATE: on further reading, they apparently mean to reclaim land mines in Virginia, whatever that means. Maybe land mine and strip mine are the same thing now.

I used to be a big cheerleader for strip mining, because the engineering was so impressive. But then I heard from people whose local terrain had been affected, and I wasn’t so sure.

It was mostly in the East, in places like West Virginia, that industrial-scale removal of overburden proved disastrous to local terrain and ecosystems. Some high-value coal was in there and they leveled some of the hills to get it.

As far as I know, there are no areas in Virginia, or West Virginia, or anywhere else where land mines can be dug up with much profit. So I guess President Special K means, uh, mines that were dug on land.

Wait, did I say that mines on land are the same thing as land mines? My bad, I meant to say everything is mine.