And The Comedian Of The Decade Award Goes To ...

It's an interesting exercise attempting to make light of a tragedy. There's a lot of them these days. Quite a lot, depending on one's definition of the word.
For example, it was quite the tragedy when my friend died. She passed in her sleep at the ripe old age of ... all of twenty-two. By all accounts - including my own - she was a rare jewel in an often dark world.
It is also a tragedy when a drunk driver mows down innocent lives, and when he/she doesn't get much more than a slap on the wrist to show for it. I doubt there's much shortage of this particular event anywhere in the world.
Each and every rape in India (and, indeed, around the world) is a tragedy on its own. Taken all together, the sheer number is a tragedy of tragedies.
The downing of MH17 is no less of a tragedy, as much as was the disappearance of its sister flight MH370. At this point I'm basically out of words to express it effectively.
And this was only a couple of electrons grazed off of a chip from a sliver off of a chunk that's close to, but not quite up against, a block that is rather near the tip of the ever-growing iceberg. For a sense of scale, give this little visualization a peek.

Oh, also America's prison system. That's rather tragic in its own right.

The question arises: How do we prioritize resources to solve things when everything is equal in magnitude?

Apparent tangent: There's oodles of research on the fact that human willpower, much like a muscle, can be overtaxed. Even without research, most people with enough presence of mind will intuitively know this. When I, for example, know in my gut that I shouldn't buy that chocolate bar - but I'm stressed at the end of the day and I really need it to unwind.
Reconciling the tangent: It takes willpower to care about things that are not directly related to oneself, regardless of how obvious the tragedy is.

My friend mused:
"What's with all the planes these days?"
She was, of course, referring to, in chronological order, the disappearance of flight MH370, the shooting-down-by-missile of MH17, and the crash of Air Algerie flight AH5017.

My response, which was my first instinct (we'll discuss later the morality of my instincts):
"Gravity decided it needed help getting rid of its detractors."
My alternate response would have been: "The Bermuda Triangle is starting to branch out."

Yes, I am a horrible human being, apparently. I've said it, and I will defend that statement.
But, actually, no, I'm not.

Remember what I said about willpower? Yeah, that thing.
There's only so many crashed airplanes one can stomach at the end of the year.
There's only so many burglaries one can deal with at the end of the month.
There's only so many rape cases one can come to terms with at the end of the week.
At some point, someone, somewhere, is raising their hands to the heavens in frustration and seriously considering demolishing the entire planet.
... Or maybe that last is just me?

I'm fairly certain I've mentioned to several people a simple fact: if I started taking life really seriously, I'd probably go insane. This is one reason why.
I make the jokes I can, because if I don't then I'm just going to devolve into an emotionless hulk. It gives me a reprieve, however temporary, from the reality that is life. It allows me to take a moment to remember that I do care about people after all.
And you know what? I would do the same even if I myself were to be a passenger on an ill-fated airline. Assuming I had the presence of mind to do so in such a situation, of course - because humor, unfortunately, also requires willpower, and I doubt a plummeting fuselage is a place well-known for its mind-strengthening vibe.

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I wonder how many people get the joke in the title.

To Go To Where We Come From

The simple truth is that on my own, I will probably never be able to escape how fucked up I am.
Of course, my brother would also never recognize how much of it is his fault. EDIT: More accurately: it's hard to say how much responsibility he would accept for me turning out the way I am.

It has been my observation that siblings born either
1) within a couple of years of each other, or
2) with roughly 7 or more years between them,
tend to have more fruitful relationships.
Before a certain age, a child lacks the self-awareness to want to monopolize affection. As far as the older sibling is concerned, the younger one has basically 'always been there'.
In the latter case, once the child has reached the so-called "age of reason" (this can be before or after 7 years, although that is accepted to be the average age it starts) and develops a conscience and rational thinking, it seems logical to have a positive relationship with the younger sibling. So this is what I have seen.

Neither was the case with my brother and I. He came through 4.5 years before I did, around 2.5 years after my sister. As far as I know, they got along fine until I was there, and from what I recall of my childhood, my sister usually was there to defend me from him. When she left to go to university, he could exercise all the power in our small world.

This is not to say that we didn't have our positive moments. I'm almost certain we did. But the sad fact is that if we did, it's all buried under this vast mountain of unhappy experiences, and I can barely dig myself out. I kept to myself so much that I didn't know what 'spooning' actually meant until I was around 20. And I certainly never experienced it until I was half past 21, which was the first time I initiated a kiss. (I'd received a kiss once - just once - before that. When I was 16. Lovely girl, wonderful friend. I was shell-shocked and basically froze up completely.)
My brother would often hang out with a girl from my year who was in the choir with him. He would give her private piano lessons in the main living room - and I seem to remember he would always get inordinately upset whenever I had to get something from the room while he was in there with her, even if it just took a matter of seconds. I don't think I understood why until just a couple of years ago.

I don't know if I was born an introvert, but I learned from him, early on, that trying something I had never tried before was a bad idea. I learned that there was knowledge I was not meant to have, because it was only for the worthy (and for people older than me). I learned that if I ever competed for anything in any way, ever, I would always lose (with the only stupid exception of dumb luck in my favor).

Maybe I was a brat. In fact I'm pretty sure I was. Most children are born that way - they have to demand attention in order to survive. I remember I would get my parents to shout at him because "his butt was pointing at me". Both of my parents worked full-time, so I doubt they had much willpower to spare on correcting me - it was just easier to shout at my brother to do something as simple as turn his body around.


Not necessarily related: I went to the same school for nine years. This school was boys/girls segregated. Not a horrible thing, and not too surprising for a Catholic school. Genders could mix before or after school, which was fine. I never met a large percentage of the girls in my own year ... until 6 months before we all graduated. This was partly due to the fact that I took public transportation rather than the school buses (which were not actually owned/run by the school). There was a girl (who is quite a stunning woman today) who lived in the next apartment block over from mine, and went to the same school, in the same grade as me, for pretty much the same length of time - and I don't recall that I even knew her name until my final year of school.

There was another girl who I used to have childhood play-dates with. She could be a supermodel, these days. We could have grown up together to be best friends, even, who knows. I recall that there were times we played games which would seem creepy or sexual to an adult mindset - but I fail to see how we could have intended that at the time, seeing as both of us were less than 10 years old. Still, over the years we drifted apart, and occasionally when we'd meet I'd make oblique references to our childhood play-dates. I never thought of it as creepy - I learned later from a mutual friend that (possibly due to her upbringing) she likely took it much more seriously than I'd imagine. I haven't seen her in years now, and, not for the first or the last time, I wonder what could have been if I'd been more mindful, or less ... myself.

You See, The Root Of Your Problem Is That You're Square

So I decided last night I'd sit down and let the words flow for a change.
With minor moderation, of course. I mean, that shit's gotta rhyme to some degree.

HOLY FUCK, SO MUCH TEEN-ANGSTY EMO.
I'm not even surprised, honestly - why would I be any other way, all things considered? I've never even done this sort of thing before.
But as one can imagine, there's something definitive about seeing the proof in my words on screen (or on paper), as opposed to being taken for granted inside my head.

So, yeah, no one is ever going to see or hear those words.