The bad news just keeps bubbling out of the nation’s Drip Pan.

    It’s bad enough to turn on the television and find a 24-hour live video feed of oil oozing toward the ocean surface at the pace of a runaway Slurpee machine. And, for the record, I’m pretty sure I saw the face of Osama bin Laden in the cloud of oil. It might have been Winston Churchill, though.

    But, last week, BP executives went to Capitol Hill to be chastised by lawmakers for the spill and their willy-nilly response. If that whole deal didn’t strike you as a bit ironic, then look again. Congressmen awkwardly stuffed their wads of big oil lobbyist money back in their pockets long enough to scold BP for the damage it has wrought to our pristine oceans.

    I guarantee no one gave the Clampetts this hard of a time.

    The message, however, was clear enough. I’ll paraphrase because I’m fluent in C-SPAN. “Americans do enough to environmentally damage our planet. We don’t need any help, especially from the snooty British.”

    But I’m not here to trudge through the murky waters of politics.

    This issue, much like Hurricane Katrina casting an air of gloom on Brad and Angelina’s coupling in 2005, is a mere distraction to the real issues facing our country.

    Namely, I’m talking about our country’s continuing scientific ventures to make beer colder. Prior to this spill, which caused CNN’s Anderson Cooper to take a sabbatical from his perch at the Coors R&D facility, I don’t think I’d ever seen our country more singularly focused on a single goal.

    This effort was epitomized in Coors’ newly unveiled cold-activated window. This new technology (SPOILER ALERT!!) allows you to peek through a window in the outer packaging of beer and see if it’s cold. Peeping Toms, out of work because of the economy, might find this appealing.

    Of course, Coors has been at the forefront of cold activation. They invented the cold-activated bottle, where the label turns blue to tell you your beer is cold. Imitators have popped up, and some beer companies actually have a label that turns yellow to inform you that your beer tastes like pee. I’m pretty sure the slogan is “Urine for enjoyment.”

    It seems a beer crisis of only immense proportions could steer this country back on the track of its larger priorities.

    Come to think of it, the perfect storm of environmental disaster would be for brewing companies to chill their beer with the ice of melting arctic glaciers.

    I’d drink to that.