This will certainly blend the most pessimistic and the one at the other end -- what was it? Oh yeah. Optimism. A recent commenter here left the message that optimism and trust were the hallmarks of ignorance.
A variety of news reports today from around the world will certainly challenge the best and the worst, and I readily admit I'm starting to shy away from all the news, because seeing idiotic talking-heads providing fifteen minutes of some American Morning program to the question "Is our butts getting bigger or is bigger butts just better?" gives me the same headache that reports from the frontlines of a half-dozen battlefields do.
Meanwhile, I have read the all-out horror stories emerging in the hearings to determine if court-martials are to be held for a group of soldiers accused of raping and killing an Iraqi girl and her family. It is as grim a story as I've heard.
Today also brought in a report from NPR about "religious assassinations" in Iraq because the visibility of female sheep butts can bring death to a shepherd, or that the arrangements of vegetables in a market stand can also bring death. You can here that report here.
In Afghanistan, the long-standing cabinet-level office of Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice (yes, that's the real office title) is maybe not as bad as it used to be. Maybe. That story is here. "No reason to be frightened," say officials, but I would recommend some fearfulness and perhaps moving to a more sane country.
I really need to stop being surprised that much of what appears in print and on TV is a variant of two topics, humanity's favorite pastimes, Death and Sex. (Or chess-playing under the Taliban regime.)
Wouldn't a sane person really really have to have the most troubling doubts about religious policing of Islam? Perhaps being immersed from birth onward in a spiral of madness makes sanity a fantasy only the truly deranged can imagine. Like the late, great Hunter S. Thompson said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
It is frustrating as a bloggin' guy, as I was just about to post a video for this Monday, from a super-catchy tune that gets my vote for Best Song of the Summer. Even the music video for it is both original and layered and still matched the thematics of the lyrics with the faces of the band. And I love this band's name, too - Gnarls Barkley. I'm not the only one who thinks this tune is worthy of fame in 2006.
It has the appeal of an old Marvin Gaye or Bobby Womack tune, but it's an MTV hit too.
"Crazy" is the song. And I guess that for better or worse, Crazy is the theme of 2006.
I know exactly what you mean. It confirms my thesis that the biggest problem around today, at least in the US, is that it takes so little of our time and effort to do those things necessary to keep body and soul together that we have all this time left over to muck things up.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that the same applies in Afghanistan or Iraq, however. Maybe it's just the clergy who have too much time on their hands.
So were we born with some gene that makes us think we have to solve the world's problems? Otherwise, why would we be so depressed by things we can't do anything about?
All of the above is why I have started listening to books while driving rather than the radio. I mean if you take away NPR, there's nothing left but sports call-in stations or ranting neo-cons.
Pah. Organized religion.
ReplyDeleteOr is that too pessimistic a statement?
Brother Mike - oh how I would like that gene removed most of the time and sometimes I think it's connected to the survival mechanism which makes a body realize grave stupidity may bring catastrophe too close to home and tells ya to get out!! sort of a "fix or flee" reflex maybe?
ReplyDeleteGAC - I say Pah! with ya - problem is, they won't leave the world alone. it chaps my ass raw to think my world is still battered and linked to a 3000 year old tribal fight from the mideast.
and then there's the New Ones, who have linked their entire religion to a ginormous battle in the middle east and THEN things will be ok. yeesh.
and I'm not sure if that's my pessimism or theirs .... heh heh
My kid loves that song. If Hubby or I put on the video, she stares at the television, transfixed.
ReplyDeleteEven your emotions have an echo in so much space Joe.
ReplyDeleteuh-oh, Jed -- i've gone all emo!
ReplyDeleteTits - kinda interesting that a kid responds so intensely to the Rorschach inkblots. Do you dare ask her what she sees in the images??
I just like the song a whole bunch, though that video is most interesting to watch.
There is no real solution to the middle east. They are educated from birth to hate the Jews and that they must be destroyed or that other sects of Islam are wrong and must be destroyed.There are are very few (if any) who beleive in co-existance.You are right,it is a 3000 year old tribal fight and it will go on until Isreal is destroyed or thother side is cowed into peace through force. It is an insane situation and will only end when an insane solution is used.I beleive Isreal will wind up using nukes on Iran. The only lasting peace can come when the children are taught peace instead of hate What else can you do when the people let the crazies fire rockets from their houses and hospitals and are willing to be hit in return so the enemy looks bad
ReplyDeleteIt makes my head hurt to think that we haven't evolved as a species any further than we have. How many people have to kill/die in the name of one god or another before the idiot humans on this planet understand that by engaging in these behaviors we are merely inserting ourselves into an endless cycle of pain and death. yes, the current conflagration is a 3000 year old family feud. However, before that humans were fighting in the names of other gods/goddesses and were raping, killing, plundering, etc. And I would be willing to wager that some other pantheon of deities will take over once the current list is proven as fraudulent. I can only hoipe that I can stake out a space in my own little corner of the world and avoid any collateral damage to myself or my friends.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if it were up to me to make policy, I'd nuke the whole area and insert a Bush memorial that no one would ever visit and that would eventually be forgotten by anyone possessed with even the slightest intelligence.
Last night I was enjoying Gnarls Barkley's cover of some Violent Femmes song (the one with the xylophone? bueller?)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it was good.
I stay away from news. I have adopted the "ostrich technique". Its good stuff.