Part One:
In which I am humiliated and later vindicated
When I was in the second grade, my teacher went around the classroom asking each student to name the materials that various objects were made from. She'd say "desk" and point to Timmy who removed his finger from his nose and wipe it on the "wood." When she got to me she said "lunchbox." To which I replied confidently, "dinosaurs!" Miss Hoffman looked at me, as though assessing whether I needed to be taken down the hall to the room where the kids made loud noises and used Play Dough instead of pencils. "Are you sure?" She asked, her eyes wide and condescending. I nodded. "Nooo," she said slowly, as all of my peers snickered. "Your lunchbox is plastic, Jessica."
If I would have had it in me as a seven-year old, I would've explained to bratty Miss Hoffman that my answer made sense, as my mother, an elementary school science teacher herself, had explained it to me: plastic is made from fossil fuel which is made naturally by the breakdown over millions of years of animal and plant matter (a.k.a. dinosaurs). I betcha I know who Miss Hoffman-- I'm sure a "Mrs." by now and a good deal heftier-- is voting for back in Wisconsin this year. (Spoiler alert: the one who talks like her, doncha know!)
Part Two:
Oil is what Dinosaurs Pooped back when People Rode Them
Sarah Palin doesn't believe in the breakdown of ancient remains because, according to her, the earth didn't exist back then. Also off the table are all of those funny-lookin' fossils with fins and thingamajiggers that eventually evolved into you, me and Biscuit. This is extremely funny (ha ha ha!), as she certainly seems to believe in their byproduct oil, which she simply adores extracting from the earth-- ahem, the chant was "Drill Baby Drill".
So Sarah, how did this oil substance get into the earth? What is it made from?
Whoa, whoa slow down there! Sarah Palin may not have an answer that will appeal to all you liberal media elites and you Washington insiders. She certainly won't have a good answer for all you crazy scientists or even anyone who has ever taken freshman biology. And come to think of it, she probably won't be able to explain it to your seven-year old either. Not even with Play Dough.
But I guess that's just how things are in Alaska. Wink!
*Thanks to my friend Pendy for the brilliant title for Part Two, and Moira for so beautifully pointing out the obvious fact that Palin doesn't believe in the fossil record and therefore, oil.