Red, White, and Tragedy
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| Marriage in any
society plods forth in a long stretch of mutual despair punctuated
by death. For some, the misery begins right away. |
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| What a horrible concept, legally chaining yourself to another human
being forever, in holy matrimony. If your income taxes don't go up, the
scaffold at your wedding reception comes tumbling down. Pictured below are
three amateur video stills suitable for anyone's scrapbook. Friday May 25,
police pulled twenty three bodies - and well over 300 injured - from the
site. The bride suffered pelvic injuries. |
"Does
this dress make me look f-- |
>>
CRUNCH << |
-- OH!
JESUS! OH GOD CHRIST ETC" |
Ah, memories. Family and guests drink, dance, and celebrate according
to custom. Then, commotion and smoke. They're sucked down a gaping hole
three stories deep. Educated news enthusiasts spin their wheels over to
click the shocking headline. They gasp in astonishment, eyes furiously scanning
the text - how could this happen? how? when? why? - until they learn
where it took place. Oh, Israel.
A Boy Burns to Death in Iran. A Shopping
Mall Explodes in Malaysia. A Bus Carrying
200 Plunges Off A Bridge somewhere in New Delhi. The location
is often disguised in a less-pronounced typeface to circumvent the inevitable
American sighs of big deal. BLAH and BLAH and BORING. If it doesn't
happen in here in the States, it never happened. |
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“Our blessed ceremony - ruined!”
turkey-gobbles a man we no longer care about, standing in some kind of
catastrophe halfway across the universe.
This was Israel's worst ever civil disaster, but with all due respect:
Zzzzzzzzzzz. Seen it.
Readers huff and puff, resentful of being tricked into temporarily giving
a shit. The feature is dismissed, the browser closed with an angry CTRL
or COMMAND-W. This isn't news.
Tehran? Bogota? Nigeria? Chile? You might as well say Huckleberry,
Hicksville. Ludicrous headlines are some countries' number-one exports.
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Are
Our Disasters Safe?
A pointless infographic from CNN.com holds our hand, gently escorting
us through this chapel of horror. Take all the time you need to wrap your
mind around this sequence. It was constructed in about five seconds.
Fisher-Price Little People enjoy snacks and breezy conversation, partying
in groups along the top tier. Smooshed, crudely-rendered, unidentifiable
victims languish in the basement like lumps of dog shit.
Gee whiz, muses the end user. You'd think structures in Israel
might be safer.
Describing the engineering handiwork of underdeveloped nations requires
no further adjectives beyond “unpredictable,” nor PowerPoint slides
like those my grandmother could assemble. In this case, a screen shot from
Donkey Kong would have been equally valuable. |
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“I was crying and afraid! It was just like
a bad dream!”
Great, just circumcise him.
The news informs U.S. citizens whether or not pornography will
be legal tomorrow. The news reminds us which companies are failing
so we can laugh at them. The news brings us Salon Table
Talk and innovative ways to spy on our girlfriends.
Even when dipped in rich milk chocolate, drizzled with loops of caramel
and served alongside sprigs of red summer raspberries on a sparkling China
pattern, these faraway spectacles are pink urinal soap cakes to
American readers. They're clichéd and disposable, even when packaged
for online publication.
Regardless of whether an article highlights squished adults or injured
children - the most disturbing online disaster stories are those framed
under a My Netscape toolbar.
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Minute by minute, the horrors of our world blend seamlessly with lame
corporate logos and dot-com whatnots.
Desperate to brand any random rectangle of the human experience, rub-and-tug
enterprises like My Lycos and Netcenter happily showcase any outrageous,
bloody tragedy available.
Maybe they orchestrate these things, who knows. Maybe it's all fake and
made-up. If so, when will this expensive, genocidal quest to discover
a more reliable coat hanger for banner ads come to an end?
When will these transparent attempts to generate “buzz” by way
of redundant special effects depicting massive death and faux sentimentality
be seen for what they really are?
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| ABOVE:
An ambulance driver's gloved hand obscures one wedding victim's C|NET
shirt. |
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“OY VEY, it was horrible.”
Cry me a river, lady. I saw this shtick in The Money Pit with
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long.
That movie came out in 1986, so watch for it in foreign theaters any day
now.
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( Posted by Rotten Staff )
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