10 October 2005

Quake Rage

Foot is feeling good but work is really stinking. Here I sit, again with nothing to do. Something has to change...Stupid Reno!

Additionally, the birdmobile isnt doing so well. Something is chunking and coughing so it has to be looked at. Sigh....it's always something eh?

The good news is....Hockey tonight. First NHL game in over a year. I am very excited. So excited in fact that i just peed in my pants a little. Good thing I am all alone eh? Also, snow! I love the snow. Here in Boulder it is just raining...which is strange. There was ~5 inches at my house today. Good times...

Two Minutes Hate
I was talking to my friend Newbie...who i just decided shall now and forever be called squirt (you dont like that one? zip it!)..and I said "Newbie (cause I hadnt changed his name yet), Newbie...how many people have to die (not including western europeans) before the US hosts some kind of live television fundraiser for them??" Obviously more the 30,000 eh? That is the vague number of dead in the quake that hit southeast asia.

30,000 people. Can you imagine? Think Katrina, and 9-11 and Rita, and throw in 25, 000 more people and you can start to get an idea. Is this tsunami big? no...not even close. But the ammount of destruction and loss of life exceeds anything we have faced as a nation. So why arent all the celebrities jumping on the Earthquake telethon bandwagon?

I can see that this most recent natural disaster comes on the heels of the last one. It may be too soon to hold another fundraiser but really...people dont seem to be interested. What makes this one different?

I have a guess....and it isnt a nice one. I wonder if people dont care because it hit Pakistan. Because "all those people killed are terrorists anyway." Really? Are we that stupid? It appears that we may indeed be.

I sent more money to the red cross, supposedly earmarking it for earthquake relief in the region. I am sure it will get there but I wonder how much help they will receive from others. Just to make sure we all understand who was effected by this earthquake you should know that:

"Officials in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles north of Islamabad, said that it was one of the hardest-hit areas. Near the ruins of one collapsed school, at least a dozen bodies lay in the streets. More than 200 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of a four-story school.

Dozens of villagers pulled at the debris and carried away bodies. Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old student, said he had heard children under the rubble crying for help immediately after Saturday's disaster."

I really hope that I am wrong. That people are just too strapped after the Tsunami and the Hurricanes. That people have been momentarily distracted by the Yankees pushing a game 5 and the play of phenom Sidney Crosby. That soon former President Bush and Clinton will come out with another television commercial requesting aid for the region and that people will respond.


~And the cynical bird goes tweet tweet..

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