Male and Female Imponderables--Cry Baby Cry
POSTED BY: Tristan
UPDATED: Monday, August 14, 2006 15:47
VIEWED: 16004
PAGE 10 of 15
hummm, s'got to be a positive then.
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oh no, i can top the callousness - i'm so ashamed of this - but i was in a life drawing class when we got the first inkling of what was happening - one of the guys picked up his ohone and read the message and said something like 'someones just hit a skyscraper in New York with a plane.
To which my reply was '*snort* bloody women drivers'(as in sarcastic, devils advocate tyepe way) The only defence i can off er is that i couldn't imagine it to be anything worse than some one clipping the building with a small aircraft - i did wonder what a plane was doing in NYC, but figured the report was wrong, and that it was a helicopter, not an aeroplane.
I went throught the rest of the afternoon, and it was only when i got back to halls and virtually everyone was crowded into the common room watching it on tv that i got the impression it was way more than i imagined.
Then i spent day fielding call from relatives who had heard that Canary Warf was also a target. Basically lying through my back teeth to them, so that they wouldn't worry. I was sat in the Docklands Light Rail Canary Warf station two days after assuring my grandma that i was fine! And still i couldn't muster more than vague alarm at all the machine guns out on display in various places.
And I'm not so sure about worrying more about poverty stricken countries - i work in a fairtrade shop, so their causes are in front of me daily - i give to charieties, i champion Fairtrade (which does more lasting good than charity - plus it gives them hope and dignity. I even met and spoken to farmers that were previously abused by the free trade system, and are now, along with their villages and neighbours, flourishing in fairtrade partnerships. So that is almost constantly on my mind. But at the same time, i reacted to things like the Tsumani and the hurricanes the same way that i reacted to 9/11. Sorriness for the vicitms but no real feeling of threat.
I think preventing atrocities, trying to form peace and restructuring the way things are done is the way to help everyone sort them selves out, for long term permenant changes, but thats a global, governmental thing, not something i can do, so mostly i feel remote and helpless about those sorts of things.
On a way lighter note - Nick Frost will probably be in the movie with Pegg, and Jessica will have a cameo. I'm pretty sure i've seen her in adverts recently, and i think she has a tv series coming up.
She's still working anyway. And of course, soon enough, enough people are going to get impatient enough to handcuff Simon Pegg to a chair and make him write Spaced series 3.
We can but hope.
And yes, i know an awful lot about likeing or not liking things for the most spurious of reasons.
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I really think it depends on what's close to you. When the towers fell, I was shocked, I was saddened, I cried a little, I didn't go to class that day, but I couldn't really worry about it affecting me directly (except in the form of the gorram Patriot Act 
) so I stopped really thinking about it after a few weeks. The Tsunami really only caused a ripple, a vague "Oh, those poor people, that sucks" thought and moving on. The bombs in London was more of a personal shock because my mom's main publishing house and agent and editor are all in London, and her agent and publisher both take the train to work, so there were a few scary hours before she got in touch with them. And now my uncle is living in England, too. The hurricane? That was closest to home, and let's just say I've seen a hell of a lot more Luisiana plates on cars around town than I ever had before. I'm more angry about it, because it didn't have to happen the way it did, and I want to smack the guy who said the country couldn't "afford" to repair and strengthen the New Orleans levies (yeah, you know who I'm talking about).
I look out for me and mine. I can't muster all the emotion it would take to feel empathy for everyone who was thousands of miles away. I don't think anyone has that kind of capacity; you always focus on where you are. Even the wonderful people throughout history who traveled and tried to right wrongs could only focus on where they were at the time.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. - Gautama Siddharta
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Well, I was working the day it happened. And since I'm in Ireland the first we heard was that two planes had hit the towers, so we pretty much knew from the start that it was a terrorist attack. Then we heard that the Pentagon was on fire. Then more planes had crashed. Then that a plane had actually crashed into the Pentegon and that more planes were missing. Then that one of the towers had blown up. Then that they both had... it was all very chaotic and unreal. Every time we got to grips with one piece of news something else seemed to happen. I was working for an insurance company at the time - with an office in the Trade Centre - so everyone had dropped everything and was trying to figure out what was going on. We actually began thinking that Word War Three had been declared and were trying to figure out who the hell had declared it.
It's the only day I remember seeing people clustered in the streets around radios and TVs. Everything just seemed to stop. I don't think anyone who was old enough to remember will ever forget.
As an Irish person I've seen what terrorism does to both sides - the country that's the target and the country that perpetrates it. All I can say is that it doesn't lead anywhere good. We went from being proud of independence to being racked with shame as the body count went higher and the coffins got smaller. Nothing justifies taking lives like that.
More animations available at http://desktophippie.googlepages.com
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Wow DesktopHippie - you said that so eloquently - I wish more people could see things like that...
Quote:
We went from being proud of independence to being racked with shame as the body count went higher and the coffins got smaller. Nothing justifies taking lives like that.
I'm afraid I tend to let out my own emotions by focusing on acceptable reasons to reveal them. It's funny but it made people very uncomfortable if I cried around the time I was recovering from a brain haemorrhage (& I was really ill) but it's OK for us to share a tear over the mass death of total strangers. Maybe it was morbid of me to watch TV all night - see it was about 11pm when the 2nd plane hit the World Trade Centres here and the late news was about to roll... it just kept rolling... and I kept thinking - I'm witnessing history - the world is never going to be the same... watching the first tower collapse was weird - I tried to accept that I was watching thousands of people die but it was too abstract.
PR - I know what you mean about what hits closest ot home - for me the WTC attack was worse coz I had a friend who's cousin lives just near there and her husband worked in the WTC & she was staying here in Australia with her 2 young children - she spent all night trying to phone her husband and it was 3 days before we knew he was OK. The tsunami also had a direct impact on most of Australia's closest neighbours (though I cannot call them all allies) many, many Australians were killed, lost or injured in the Tsunami and thousands of Aussies were involved in the recovery projects - including many that I know. New Orleans would have had a much greater impact on you for similar reasons - but I must say I agree that it shoyuld never have been as bad as it was there - there are people to blame for that, so how come they still carry on as if they smell of roses???
Rant over - for now!
New Imponderable - which I'll have to join tomorrow as I'm about to go to bed...
Is it more acceptable for guys to spend hours on the computer than girls? My Dad lives on his computer - but my Mum is suspicious that I mention my newfound friends on the internet and thinks I might be spending 'too much time' on here? Another friend - sci fi fan and computer 'geek' told me to take it easy recently as he thought I might be spending too much time on the 'net... He must have spent 12 hours a day 7 days a week on line for as long as I have known him... but my 1/2 hour - 6 hours of shiney FFFnet time are considered 'too much'??? It's not like I'm looking at porn or joining an online cult???
Is it just me or has anyone else found this sort of thing happening?
And now that's said/asked... goodnight shiney browncoat family - I'll catch you tomorrow!
Love you - Magdelena x x x
"I love my Captain!"
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On the attacks - my brother had flown back from the States the day before. I think my main feeling was sheer disbelief. But I lived and worked in London when that random nutcase was setting off nailbombs. In fact, I was coming up out of the Underground when the Soho bomb went off, which made for an exciting evening all round. Mentally and emotionally, I have to shut down when I see things like that, or I get overwhelmed.
I get a lot of stick about the time I spend on line and for that same kind of reasons. Mind you, perhaps we are a cult. 
I think the brown coats are much groovier than dodgy robes, though.
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Hey, I decided it was time to jump into this thread.
Anyway, people make fun of me because of all the time I spend online, but they don't think it's unacceptable or anything, just weird.
And I'd say the Browncoats are more of a big wacky family than a cult.
My 9/11 experience was unique in that I was 11 and at school during the time. We were in class trying to decide a name for our gerbils, when a teacher came in and whispered to my teacher what happened. Then our teacher turned the tv on, in time to watch the 2nd plane hit. When we were watching it, some of the kids just thought it was a movie, or atleast fake in some way. But then our teacher was crying, and she turned the tv off, and most of us had figured out what happened by then.
Then I came home and watched all the news coverage for hours. I have to say, the pride I felt in our country after that was something I've never seen before. Everyone in the neighborhood had an American flag on their yard, stangers would come up and talk with you, and there was just this feeling in the air. On the other hand, it's kind of sad how many deaths it took for people to have pride in their country. But then the war came, and bad decisions all around, and now the pride in our country is at a big low.
But I think the WTC attacks affected me more then the tsunami and the hurricane because people were directly responsible for it. And watching the videos of people jumping out of the building and seeing all of the smoke completely covering N.Y.C. really affected me.
With the hurricanes, I had the amazing experience of going to help with relief efforts last spring. And you know that phrase, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Thats how all these people from louisiana felt. It's hard to explain, but for the most part these people were so optimistic, and okay with it. You see signs like, Camille was a lady but Katrina was a bitch. And tshirts saying things like, I survived hurricane Katrina and all I got was this lowsy tshirt, and a plasma screen tv. They make jokes about it, so I guess knowing how they feel about it makes me feel better too.
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I don't know, despite what PR said about it taking to much to empathise about everyone, I still don't think i feel what i ought. I used to think that i was emotionally dead inside - now i know thats ridiculous, but as I've yet to 'properly' mourn my grandfather's death, and i have such a hard time feeling anything about all this, there must be a smidgen of truth to it!
ah well. I think i shall pull the 'best not to think about it' card.
Ah - the injustice of the way my brother and i are both treated - He is a Warhammer geek - he works in the shop, the house is littered with hundreds of the figures, he wears the clothes, buys the book, reads the novels, and spends hours and hourse and hours online, and in various forums.
and i'm the geek of the family.
how did that happen?!?!?!?!?!
He's indulged at every turn - if he wants to talk about it, they listen, i get the funny looks, he goes to the tournaments, i feel like an idiot for letting people know that D*C is a convention. He knows everything there is to know.
Recently my mother got into geneology, and spends hours on the pooter looking things up. She's planning a small odyssey around england to look up all our relatives.
And i'm still the geek!
life is not fair! its just not.
*sob*
I need a hug.
http://www.myspace.com/seryndippyt
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I must have been staying up just to give you that, Seryn, because now I have to go to bed.
My mom just thinks I spend too much time "sitting". Which I probably do. Also, I am the geek, I can admit it. But that's me. again!
'Night
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. - Gautama Siddharta
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But Seryn, you're our geek, sweetie! Zen hug here.
I think 'otaku' behaviour is indulged in males. My mother still frets that I spend too much time writing or on-line, and not enough time 'looking after' my husband - meals on the table when he gets in, housework, sort of thing. 
'Hobbies' are very nice, until they interfere with what you 'should' be doing.
There aren't words or emoticons to express quite how I feel about that.
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