don’t panic

What can you say about a disaster that kills more than 50,000 people (…make that 100,000… no wait, 120,000)? The recent earthquake in the Indian ocean has left me with an odd stunned feeling. The media is drooling to show us piles of bodies and live video footage of the actual tsunami taking lives by the score even as we watch.

And we do watch.

Sadly.

We are sucked into the news-orgy of death, waiting for the latest rise in the death toll on CNN. We can’t wait to see a fresh batch of images showing us the mighty destructive power of “mother nature”…

As long as it’s someone else’s dead child in the picture.

It’s really easy not to feel anything when we look at death that’s on the other side of the world. We don’t know those people. Most don’t even share a common language.

But they are people, people just like me. That could be my daughter drowned and limp.

I live on a fault line, at the tail end of the San Andreas. A big earthquake could put me into that picture, very easily. Too easily. I think about disasters. I prepare for them even. But I don’t feel the shock and loss like those in Sri Lanka today, and I hope I never do.

So, screw you, CNN. May karma wash over you and the rest of the media in really big waves so that you will think twice before you post that “scoop” about another 5000 found dead, and be thankful that you are not among them.

Well, I decided that it was time to start a cooking journal. It’s sort of a hobby, and while this journal is mostly to complain about life and the world in general, my cooking blog is there to show what a goof I am when it comes to what is typically a woman’s trade.

There’s not much there right now, and it still needs some design work, but here ya go.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds – One man’s cooking journal.

I couldn’t resist commenting on this one at Salon.com.

It seems that this mexican city has banned indoor nudity.

Hmm… it makes you wonder how people there are going to bathe? Or get dressed?

I have these visions of an entire city of people who haven’t changed their underwear in six months for fear of getting arrested.

And what constitutes “nudity” anyway? If you leave your shirt on, is it okay to go around without your pants? What about just a hat? Glasses? Socks? Can I stand in front of my window in my underwear?

And how in the world are they going to enforce this law? Sure, it’s easy if the offending person happens to be exposing themselves to a bus full of people on the street, but are they going to have nudity checks where they bust down the doors of suspected nudists to catch the in the buff?

Oh my.

I’ve been following the whole Martha Stewart debacle for some time now, wondering if a rich white American woman would actually serve hard time for a crime. And now in prison, it seems that Martha is predictably starting up the gripe sessions.

In this recent Salon article, we see her imploring us to consider the women who are “devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family.”

Uh, Martha… It’s prison. If it were fun it would be called a theme park. The whole idea is that it’s not a nice place to spend your Christmas, so that people won’t want to end up there and so won’t break the law. It’s a penalty. If the food is “bad” then tough cookies… literally. What you really might want to consider my dear, is that no matter how lacking the food in prison is, you are still eating better than about a third of the entire world.

It also peeves me to see her standing on her soapbox while she suggests that Americans should push for reforms in federal sentencing guidelines for nonviolent first-time offenders and particularly for drug offenders, who she said would be better served by rehabilitation than prison. Yeah? Okay, but who’s going to pay for that rehabilitation? You? Prison is a deal compared to drug rehab costs.

I think it just rubs me the wrong way to hear a prominent person spout off on a topic that she wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot spatula before her incarceration. Sure, her perspective has changed, but you are the person you are, and if you weren’t interested in such and such a cause before, you really don’t have much of a right to suddenly start urging “the rest of us” to take notice, especially as she appeals her conviction. It might be different if she were a nobody, but she’s not. She’s the owner of a billion dollar company.

And lest we forget, she is also a convicted liar.

While you consider how hard you have it this Christmas, Martha, remember that you are serving your time in a minimum security facility. It could certainly be a lot worse. Just because your crime was “non-violent”, doesn’t mean that its’ circle of influence didn’t cause just as much pain and suffering in the world as any other form of infraction. People watch you and what you say and do. Hell, half the housewives in America and no doubt the world, want to be you… albeit, before you broke the law.

You want to earn my respect? Admit your guilt. Serve your time. Keep your mouth shut on topics outside your house.

You know, most of the time the internet is an amazing and wonderful tool for enriching and expanding our lives. It allows almost anyone to instantly find a wealth of information on almost any topic, at any time of day, from anyplace on the planet. That’s just awesome.

But the down side to this freedom is human nature.

I wish it were not so, but no matter how hard we want to deny it, there will always be some scum who has no respect for the rest of humanity and is only interested in exploiting others for personal gain.

Yup.

I’m in the hospital for a freakin’ week, then another with my folks to mend after surgery, and I come home to find that some SOB casino site has gone in and spammed every one of my posts with bogus comments. I also had about 50 new users, all of which were various porn sites just using me for a free link to boost their placement in the search engines.

It’s not just the time that it will take to go in and delete all that crap… It’s the feeling of being violated. It’s the downright depression I feel knowing that I’m going to have to shut down the ability for others to leave comments. I like that feature.

I think search engines should implement a negative link option. Something such that a webmaster can go in and put in some code and the search engine will actually penalize the linked site.

So anyway, here’s a virtual finger to you, “casino games”. May you and your server rot in torment for all eternity.