If you think that junk shot and top hat reek of desperation, well maybe so.

FORBES: With 'Life On Line,' BP Plans Top Hat, Junk Shot To Stop Oil Leak

Junk shot might sound like a Hail Mary, but the technique has worked in clogging onshore blowouts so that they can then be smothered with weighted mud.

FORBES: With 'Life On Line,' BP Plans Top Hat, Junk Shot To Stop Oil Leak

For instance, the elaborate system of manifolds and pipes had to be designed to avoid any 90-degree corners, so the bulky material used in the junk shot didn't get stuck.

WSJ: Spill Fight Shows Progress

That starts off with a "junk shot, " in which material such as rubber tires and golf balls is pumped into the shut-off valve, or blowout preventer, that sits atop the well.

WSJ: Spill Fight Shows Progress

The second container of junk provides another shot.

ECONOMIST: The Gulf oil spill

Following the introduction of America's anti-spam CAN-SPAM Act in January 2004, junk e-mailing fell briefly but then shot up again (see chart).

ECONOMIST: Opening Pandora’s inbox | The

To illustrate that it is baseless, he points to what he considers another great firm unfairly maligned by its critics as arrogant: Drexel Burnham Lambert, a freewheeling investment bank that shot from nowhere to market prominence in the junk-bond boom of the 1980s.

ECONOMIST: The energetic messiah