A world in peril: The helium shortage
Code Red, folks. Forget AIDS and the droves of folks suffering from undernourishment, and put any and all civil wars out of your mind. This morning Matt pointed me to this article that highlights the global helium shortage that’s been plaguing us silently.
The article begins:
While people have been complaining about rising fuel prices, another type of gas shortage has slipped up on them. A global helium shortage has been evolving for a year, the product of increased demand and low production.
Oh god, no! No more high-pitched voices and whippets!
But seriously, I want to know who the hell besides clowns, magicians, and the occasional weird uncles purchases helium in such quantities as to warrant a worldwide shortage. Seriously, is there some secret sect of clown mages that ritualistically perform balloon tricks on the grandest of scales, building balloon-cities and crafting balloon-people for nefarious reasons? And, if this is the case, why haven’t I been invited? It sounds badass. This sort of balloon-fest, if it did exist, should be opened to the masses.
Anyway, who cares, right? Well, there are less amusing uses of the gas:
The lighter-than-air gas actually is put to more serious uses, from launching the space shuttles to cooling MRI machines to making flat-screen TVs, but helium suppliers say it’s the lower-priority balloon businesses that feel the pinch.
Exactly. I mean NASA can most definitely afford a price increase of 47% (the average). Jesus, they effing fly to the moon! But these lower-tier hoopleheads…they’re the ones who apparently gotta watch out. The article goes on to mention a few proprietors who use helium to “wow” (what’s the opposite of sold out?) crowds. For example, we have Greta Bridges, owner of Bridges Brite Ideas in Florence, Alabama:
Bridges, a balloon artist, has seen the cost of helium tanks rise from $18 last year to $38 this year. She charged 75 cents for an 11-inch latex balloon in 2006. Now customers pay $1.25.
Who the hell is paying 75 cents for a balloon animal? I can recall with a great deal of clarity that the only times in my childhood I had a balloon animal were when they were given out for free at a fair or church picnic. If I would have asked my parents to buy me one, they would have been like: “Um, why?” - and with just cause. Balloon animals are stupid. Really, really stupid. The balloon-shapers make giraffes and dogs (they all look the same anyway) and then you get home later that day and the stupid neon-colored thing just sits there, shrinking slowly over the next few hours and withering so it eventually looks like when you put a hot dog in the microwave for too long. Then you just pop them to scare your friends/siblings/parents and forget you ever had them. STUPID!
And apparently helium gas will be gone in ten years. So, I advise you, dear readers, if you have any parties planned from now until then, get it while you can. Because Jesus H. Christ I’d hate to see the riots that’ll form at party stores and markets when there’s but one last helium tank and forty to fifty angry middle-aged, white-trash moms vying for it to appease their screaming child(ren).
Think about that.
Ciao.
Helium is used in Neuro-magnetic imaging. The next time a docor tells you, or a loved one, you need an NMR, remember that this technology would not work were it not for Helium.
Whippets are filled with nitrous oxide, not helium. So there is no need to worry about whip cream disappearing. As long as we have whip cream, than we don’t really need anything else.
Oh, and my favorite balloon animal is a snake. Or worm. They are the best.
First I wanna say I am sorry to hear the writer of this article was so poor in his childhood that his white trash family could not afford him a simple balloon, which obiviously left him bitter and unable to see the simple joys of life, such as a mother buying her child a balloon just for the simple joy it will bring her child. The writer (if you wanna call it that) has not gotten over his childhood trauma. There is a whole industry of people who make a living from balloon sales, decorators that make memories at weddings, cottillions, baptisms, 1st birthday partys,etc. Nothing the bitter writer of the article would know anything about as I am sure he is single and staying that way. We are all very affected by the shortage of helium as we will see a whole industry dissapear, oh and F.Y.I. balloon animals are not made with helium, do your research for god’s sake! They are made with air, maybe the writer of the above article can donate his head for a lifetime supply of it, I am sure if we use the air in his head we will never have a shortage of it!