Venezuela’s electric power company ran out of excuses again this week and decided to go back to creative ideas and blame an opossum for the latest blackout in Ciudad Guayana. The excuse goes even beyond the opossum by saying that people have been leaving garbage behind, which attracts animals, which then manage to eat a cable, cutting off all power to sections about half the size of a city like Ciudad Guayana.
Of course, nobody explains why there is no clean up to remove the garbage, or measures to prevent people from throwing garbage near the power plant or transformers. But more importantly, how can a system be designed such that a single opossum can short-circuit half a city?
Just asking.
The Devil's Excrement 
June 17, 2012 at 12:58 am
“how can a system be designed such that a single opossum can short-circuit half a city?”
That’s easy Miguel: Imperiobushbombascapitalismo
June 16, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Tenemos altos indicadores de salud, vivienda y hasta de alegría, porque somos el país más feliz de Sudamérica gracias al sistema que ha diseñado el comandante Chávez estos 13 años”,expresó Faría.
Would that be the 3×5=18 system?
June 16, 2012 at 11:57 pm
The 3×5=18 system is how Chavez wins elections.
June 16, 2012 at 2:22 pm
That didn’t take long. From the most famous rodent:
http://www.elchiguirebipolar.net/15-06-2012/rabipelado-muerde-a-presidente-de-corpoelec-pensando-que-era-una-bolsa-de-basura/
June 16, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Really brilliant!!! Thanks.
June 16, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Two years ago it was Juana La Iguana. Venezuela’s wild life has a quite refined appetite.
June 16, 2012 at 10:06 am
arepa de rabipelao con cebolla y mayonesa q rico
June 16, 2012 at 10:44 am
Thanks I knew there was a recipe.
June 17, 2012 at 5:21 am
There are many recipes. I do not advise to use mayonnaise, though.
¡Por eso es que están tan obesos los venezolanos ahora, coño!
That’s really heavy on your cholesterol levels. Use garlic.
I know Anglo-Saxons are not used to too much garlic (first comments are about that in Spain), but you can really get use to it: a wee bit of salt, pepper, a wee bit of parsley and as much garlic
as you want and that rabipela’o will beat any coq au vin any time!
My dad and his brothers used to eat opossums during the times of Medina Angarita. That was a delicatesse for poor people in the countryside in Venezuela, probably in the US South as well.
Perhaps that’s why they didn’t have power outages back then…wait, they hardly had any electricity…most power grids were built during the IV Republic!
June 16, 2012 at 9:51 am
Venezuelans will hunt and eat just about anything. My take is that while they were trying to make these Arepa con possum happen chasing down dinner in the sub-station something happened to the equipment. Look for the machette rojo.
June 16, 2012 at 9:15 am
Miguel, around Davie you may still be able to find some redneck places that sell fried possum. Tastes like chicken!
June 16, 2012 at 8:59 am
Are they going to blame the non-operational undersea VZ-Cuba cable on stone crabs?
June 16, 2012 at 8:14 am
Talking about opossums……could it be that Chavez is playing dead just like a opposum does when he feels threatened? He certainly looked and sounded better today….suddenly more appearances. Could he be playing us?
June 16, 2012 at 9:17 am
he was agitated and highly medicated imo
June 17, 2012 at 8:01 am
Might help if you provided some visual proof, s fla, of that agitation and highly medicated status. In fact, why don’t you point out exactly where you saw what you did, from the video in this link: http://www.vtv.gov.ve/index.php/economicas/83586.
What I see is someone as mentally scattered as he’s always been, relying on his customary pulling-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat tricks. Nothing new, here.
The only difference I see is someone standing, rather than sitting, as has been his custom for so many years. Perhaps sitting and getting up from that seat would be more telling to his ministers, not that we, as a public, would ever be privy to that sight.
Other than that, you have to wonder, as a minister, about your president, who after 14 years on the job, decides to study economics, the night before his presentation.
June 16, 2012 at 9:18 am
you still think HCF is playing us? That is the performance of a lifetime!
June 16, 2012 at 9:32 am
I read he played a chain during coverage of El Zulianazo, was it a rerun?
June 15, 2012 at 7:21 pm
OT
Chavez:
Informó que a partir de ahora todos los viernes serán, “viernes de economía”.
… denunció que las clases más poderosas de la población tratan de mantener al margen de la economía a los desprotegidos: “Hay una estrategia que es de las cúpulas que han dominado al mundo: mantener a las mayorías en estado de ignorancia sobre el tema económico”, criticó.
Capriles:
“Hay que dejar de hablar tantas pistoladas”
Now we are talking. Way to go HCR!
June 15, 2012 at 9:32 pm
Yeah, HCR has been ratcheting up the rhetoric, often zeroing in on effective responses to the airhead in fatigues.
June 16, 2012 at 3:18 pm
You mean the 5×3=18 guy?
June 16, 2012 at 10:33 pm
El mejmo.
June 16, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Gotcha!
June 16, 2012 at 1:34 pm
How about, “Este es el estado donde hay la mayor pobreza de Venezuela, una gran contradicción porque esta es la tierra natal de quien ha tenido el poder durante los últimos 14 años.” Speaking in Rojas, Barinas state.
June 15, 2012 at 7:18 pm
It’s a CIA possum!
June 16, 2012 at 8:58 am
HAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 15, 2012 at 6:10 pm
ok…from an electrician’s standpoint….a standard high voltage line runs at 14,400 volts (and is then stepped down for distribution to useable levels like 120/240 v that we have in our houses) a “possum” would not only have to chew through 3….THREE cables (because everything from a generating plant is supplied in 3 phase power) simultaneously! but would also have to be survive said culinary experience…google for videos on what happens when a 14,400 line starts to arc…i dont think that critter would be even recognizable for people to say what it was that caused the fault.
in short, cutting one cable would cause a “brown-out” but not a blackout…and over much smaller areas. ok technical i know…and im sure no-one hee actually belives the excuse, but i thought i might put in some ammo that one might use in a debate with chavistas.
June 15, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Maybe he just ate through 2 cables, and then pee’d on them to short-circuit the system?
June 15, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Opossum is correct. Possum is the colloquial usage.
June 15, 2012 at 9:27 pm
I enjoyed your explanation, Mike. But I suspect chavista logic would be overloaded with the BIG numbers. After all, if Chavez multiplies 5 x 3 to arrive at 18, you can’t expect much from his ardent believers.
June 16, 2012 at 9:08 am
very true! i forgot about the “revolutionary math” that he uses!! sorry for getting so technical…was just getting my two cents in for one area i have expertise…poli-sci isnt my forte, but electricity is my life! 🙂
THANKS FOR THE COMMENTS GUYS!!!
June 16, 2012 at 9:11 am
i guess i just wish that someone in a position to question (ie : the media!!!!! hint hint!) would seek expert opinion to either verify or debunk official stories….utopian i know, but for the sake of my friends and family still in Venezuela, i can dream…right?
June 16, 2012 at 1:53 pm
See, now you guys just don’t get the beauty of the Revolution… See, if Chavez says that 5 x 3 = 18, then it is. He can do that. You just have to believe…
June 15, 2012 at 5:43 pm
This story gets even better the more you analyze it:
“The excuse goes even beyond the opossum by saying that people have been leaving garbage behind, which attracts animals, which then manage to eat a cable…”
Are they saying that opossums are so dumb that they would rather eat plastic and electric wire than eat the real food that was thrown out?
June 15, 2012 at 5:57 pm
No. Actually what they are saying is that they (the people making up this story) are so dumb that they think people would believe that any animal would prefer to chew on plastic than to eat real food. I guess any living being is smarter than a chavista.
June 15, 2012 at 6:57 pm
No one can afford to throw out real food in Venezuela today, ergo, the poor opossums have to eat plastic
June 16, 2012 at 8:57 am
Now THAT makes sense!
June 15, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Where’s the dead possum? He didn’t chew threw THAT cable and survive.
Also, when did the outage occur? Opposum’s are only active late at night.
Maybe they should have chosen a different rodent to blame it on.
June 15, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Excuse me! Marsupial, not rodent. LOL!
June 16, 2012 at 3:21 am
Possum the other other white meat.
June 16, 2012 at 3:26 am
Waussau “Possum Capital of the World” is a few miles west of here.
http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/possummonument
June 16, 2012 at 6:58 am
must be Bush’s fault
June 16, 2012 at 10:03 am
Bring on the Possum Queen contest! … this year, on August 4th, in Wasau, FL.
Any chance of Osmel Sousa sending the offending rabipelao to Wasau to compete? For after all the ingestion of plastic, that rabi should be prime exhibition material .. if you know what I mean. …
June 15, 2012 at 5:17 pm
“But more importantly, how can a system be designed such that a single opossum can short-circuit half a city?”
The better question to ask is how could the “empire” design through (no doubt) genetic manipulation and enhanced cybernetics a Didelphis marsupialis capable of bringing down the electrical power of half a city.
I am telling you, from Juana La Iguana to Wenceslao El Rabipelao, this revolution definitively has very powerful enemies. Lucky of us, we have Sarcoma Andante to defend us. Oh wait …