As sure as night is dark and day is light...

Well, dwain has pointed out that it's been some time since he read any good news. Now, while "news" is rarely of the good variety, I kind of find myself agreeing with him. After all, it's been raining here for the last three or four days, but it feels like it's been months since we last saw the sun. Today it stopped raining, but it was still this semi-miserable day. So, of course, that puts essentially the entire town into a depressing mood (and also seems to make people forget how to drive). Also, this hurricane puts a damper on people's spirits, regardless of whether it directly affects them or not. The mayor of New Orleans is stating that thousands are dead, which seems to me to be through stupidity in evacuation methods more than anything else. I mean, taking people and stuffing them into a football stadium? Yeah, let's put thousands in a huge bowl and not expect for a frickin' class-5 hurricane to blow a hole in the roof. Makes perfect sense to me. I was stumbling about two weeks ago and found this website and it gave me a laugh at the time. However, when you look at that map, it does make you wonder just a little bit. I mean, God's got more important stuff to do, right? Now, however, the map is just a little morbid. You can shrug it off and point out that several southern states voted for Bush, it's just a coincidence, but there's this little voice in the back of my head that says, "Yeah, but those paths are a little suspicious."
So, anyway, because of dwain's comments, I decided to embark on a quest to find good news. Not funny news, but good, "restoring-faith-in-the-human-spirit" news. Oy. What have I done.
The first thing I came upon was this article. As a guy, this makes me cringe, big time. It also is not rooted in a "good news" sort of way, but I like that someone is standing up and trying to stop a horrible and extremely dangerous tradition. Now, I'm not blind, and I can read between the lines a bit. South Africa is one of the most racist countries in the world, and the inventor of this device is a white woman. I get the feeling that the majority of these, ugh, devices will be distributed to white women to "protect" them from black men. However, rapex could easily be given to black women as well for the same purposes.
So, after some digging and sorting through some non-Katrina related stories, I did find this bit of good news. I might not be around in 10 million years, but it's nice to know that guys might (assuming we don't develop some marvelous method for wiping ourselves out in the meantime).
Now, maybe this seems a little too "good," but there is this site, which covers good news events. It seems a little dated, but they're working on a new site, so their time is split.
This one makes me happy, since I just got off the phone from a two hour conversation.
Finally, there was this story that actually had some of that faith-restoring power. Just that one line, "You don't want to hurt your neighbor," said a lot to me.
So, yeah, the bad overpowers the good in the news. But maybe the day when we report good news as if it were the rarity and not the common is the day that I might just want to check out.
In my psych class this morning, the teacher pointed out how people in New Orleans were looting, but in some cases it was for food and water. The question was whether or not that was really wrong. The story of Jean Valjean comes to mind, the man who stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her kids. He didn't steal it for himself, mind you, but did it for others. He gets caught, does his time, and yet Javert dogs him for stealing that loaf for the rest of his life. Valjean was a man who did an act which was legally wrong but morally right. However, the looters in New Orleans aren't looting for that reason. Sure, they're taking care of their families, but they're really screwing over all the other families. Stealing food to feed yours first takes away from the people who might need it more at that moment. Additionally, stealing food and water for the purpose of selling it is even worse.
Alright, now for a little "outside-my-little-corner-of-the-world" stuff. Today in methods, we discussed how isolated Americans generally are. We have a comfort zone and most try to never leave it. Of course, this ends up with Americans believing that they are really the only ones that matter or have certain problems ever happen to them. I heard a lot of people say that Americans were lucky because something like the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 had never happened to us. Welcome to the big leagues of disaster, boys and girls. No, it's nowhere near the size, scope, or devastation as what happened "over there," but it's a nice little black eye to remind us that nothing is ever going to happen to just one place. Americans generally don't realize that they need to be part of a global community and stop whining when things don't go their way.
As dwain pointed out, the Iraqi bridge incident is pretty bad, but anyone who cared could see some sort of event coming. But, of course, most Americans don't care, they just notice that the American dead from the Iraqi Mission (It's not a war, not yet a quagmire) is around 1800, and are absolutely appalled by it. Okay, first, look at a different set of numbers. Second, let's compare. American deaths, according to this website are at 1882, overall. Now, in WWII, American dead numbered 405,399. Doing some simple math, WWII lasted 1397 days, meaning that there were 290 deaths, on average, each day. Now, the Iraqi Mission has lasted 896 days and the average is 2.1 deaths per day. Why on Earth do people keep bringing up these "devastating" casualties as reasons why the war is wrong? People point to 2.1 American deaths per day, but they ignore the at least 27.3 Iraqi civilian deaths over the same average 24 hours. Yeah, you know, the Iraqi civilians, the ones who we're giving democracy to, the ones we're there to, um, protect. Nice work, folks.
Who wants to be the last man to die in the Middle East?
I've made jokes riffing off Springsteen about how we can put a rifle in somebody's hand, send them off to a foreign land, so they can kill the yello--I mean, Arabian man (By the way, I finally got that acoustic version of Born in the USA. It's actually really, really good. He holds one bit too long--the "he's all gone" line--but it's amazingly good otherwise). However, I also realize that this war is nothing but trouble, and the problem is how to get out. I look at it and know that we can't just pack up and leave in the middle of the night. That would render undoubtedly more than 30,000 lives lost meaningless. Yet how many more lives does it cost to make it worth it, and, really, what makes it worth it? Giving a people a republic government is just going to end up with some dictator in power that people all over the world will hate. I think America proved that one true all on its own. In fact, America has never been a really good team player in the global community, but we just haven't learned how to butt out yet. Okay, maybe we can ensure safety for America, and maybe the world, from "terrorists." Well, maybe not. Um, cheaper fuel prices? Ha! I laugh at your gullibility. First, duh. Second, do you really think that the best way to spend billions and billions of dollars was on a method to keep us addicted to a non-renewable energy? And third, duh. I mean, come on. I'll take any guess you've got. But, I swear to God, if your guess includes the term "Axis of Evil," I will hunt you down. You buy into that soundbyte and you are just too Republican for your own good.
Okay, enough ranting about the world.
I recently got in touch with an old friend. She and I have technically known each other since before birth, as our mothers knew each other in lamaze class. We were pretty good friends though high school, with the only real difference between us being that she was a firm vegan and, as anyone who has eaten a meal around me knows, I am firmly not anywhere near a vegan. We kind of lost touch after the first year of college, despite the fact that she was at a university less than two miles away from mine. Anyway, the other day, I was looking up fellow alums from my high school on facebook to see where they had ended up and found my friend's entry. After a little mulling, I dropped her an e-mail to find out what she was up to, having just finished up an anthropology degree. She responded promptly that she had just moved to Michigan to go to MSU's law school. She thought it was an interesting coincidence that I e-mailed her that day because, in her first class, she sat next to a guy who (at least she claims) is my twin, which made her feel a lot more comfortable there. I guess that's nice, since she has that trademark southern twang to her voice, which she said makes her stand out in Michigan. I guess if you move that far away, you embrace that which looks familiar, which I guess implies something about our friendship, given that she hasn't seen me in four years. I'm not entirely sure why I'm putting this up. Oh, well.
Alright, so, I guess I should do some SotP catch-up. The last, formal SotP was Phil Collins' Something Happened on the Way to Heaven, is a seriously upbeat song that deals with lost love. Yeah, bit of an oxymoron there. The song is pretty straight-forward, about a guy who had love but let something stop him from fully embracing it, the something that happened on the way to heaven. Basically, if you've seen Chasing Amy and know the general jist of Silent Bob's speech, you can understand the song.
The last post I made was of the lyrics for Born in the USA by The Boss, sans the chorus. I guess that the only problem that Springsteen encounters is that he's essentially a pop artist, meaning that his songs generally sound upbeat. Both of his "Born" songs, USA and to Run, are kind of sad songs, but have this poppy music that cover that up. In recent years, he's really stepped away from that, making his songs more vocally and lyrically driven, giving them significantly more weight. Of course, from what I understand, his album sales have taken a hit because of it, but, after all, this isn't 1984, kids aren't going to buy Springsteen, no matter how he sounds.
Song of the Post: First, some background on this SotP. There's this great website called Songfacts, where users can contribute what trivia about songs and what they think it means. This song was inspired by a Bruce Springsteen concert, coincidentally. It's done in 7/4 time, and the singer's ex-wife supposedly attempted suicide while playing this song. While most people debated whether the song deals with religion or not, the one interpretation that I liked most, though don't believe at all, is that the song is about a sniper about to kill someone. Heh.
"Today, I don't need a replacement, / I tell her what the smile on my fact meant."