Regarding the Tsuamni:

My mom called me that morning at about 4:30AM to let me know that I should run for my life. Of course, California was hardly reached by it in the end and so on, but what is happening in Japan right now is positively apocolyptic and only makes me feel the fagility-- and what I feel at this moment to be the futility of life. Does anyone's life end when they are ready, when they are prepared to die? Utterly? In human terms? Perhaps a few. Doubtful. What's more, what really pains me about all of this is the fact that life goes on. I have never really been able to comprehend how people, us, how we can just continue to go to work and pay bills (or try...) and sleep and smile at our kids while on the other side of the globe our fellow man is dying, swept up in a large wave, or falling out of a huge, burning building. I feel like for every sentence written afterward there should be a footnote, footnotes upon footnotes for everything. "Lavendar lotion is nice.. -footnote: people died in Japan. footnote: people died in 9/11. footnote: people died in ww2. footnote: my cat died once. footnote: john lennon died, too. footnote: christ was crucified. footnote: texans died in the alamo." I hate it, because we are all disassociated, disengaged, and though that seems dreadful at first we have to recognize it as a good thing. We watch the news, we turn it off. We turn it off so we can survive. The end.