Try 'jiggling the wires' to fix oil spill

This will continue for several minutes, until one intrepid guy will push the power button on the TV, restoring both the baseball game and the peace in the living room.

The oil spill in the gulf is kind of like that. You basically have oil leaking out all over the Gulf of Mexico, an area previously made up of water, and no one really knows how to fix it.

"Cover it in a box," said BP while giving off aromas of sleaziness.

"Dump a bunch of hair on it and hope that the oil does less damage when it's furry," said a bunch of people.

"Let's see what the guy from Marion Barber with Wolves' thinks," said a tiny, barely disguised voice from the back of the room. That voice, as it happens, belonged to Kevin Costner.

Costner, the actor best known by people over the age of 30, has come forth with one of the few solutions to this whole thing that may actually work. After the Exxon Valdez spill (prior to the Gulf, the biggest tragedy on the water that Costner didn't direct and star in - insert rimshot noise here) the actor was so moved that he purchased several centrifuges from the government designed to separate oil from water. The government, being fans of spending money no matter the cause, are now buying their centrifuges back at a markup from Costner's company.

But wait. As you're no doubt asking: What do actors know about cleaning up oil spills? Even those as accomplished as Costner, who managed nearly to fake an English accent through almost 12 minutes of "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." Shouldn't something this important be left to the stewardship and ingenuity of the Dallas Cowboys?

I'm glad you asked. Former Dallas Cowboys  quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Drew Bledsoe recently held a news conference to hawk their own device for cleaning the gulf, if by "hawk" you mean "made up a bunch of scientific-sounding words about." According to the two noted scientists, their not-at-all-fake-sounding Ozonix machines use "ultrasonic transducers and acoustic cavitation to create millions of micro-bubbles that rapidly transport the oil to the water's surface in a focused containment zone for nonchemical separation."