Death Death Death Death Death By Mark Morford

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Mark Morford: Death Death Death Death Death

" SF Gate Newsletters " <noteserrata

Wed, 31 May 2006 01:09 -0700

 

 

 

 

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Death Death Death Death Death

This is your news. This is your news on a morbid high of tragedy and

mayhem. Can you deflect?

 

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

 

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

 

 

The home page of SFGate.com was bleeding from several open wounds.

 

For much of one particularly hellish day just last week, the top items

on our site (and later, in the newspaper itself) read like a drunken

romp though hell's sandbox: A woman who allegedly tossed her three

young kids into the bay claimed she was hearing the voice of God. A

car driven by a manically depressed driver (are there other kinds?)

plowed into a McDonald's in Georgia and took out five people, three of

them toddlers.

 

A 19-year-old kid stabbed a 16-year-old kid at a party and ran off.

Five separate shootings in one night in Richmond left three dead and

one critical. Jesus H. Christ returned to Earth for a single minute

and took one look around and said, " Oh right this is exactly what I

meant, " and got back into his cosmic Mini Cooper and peeled away in

frustration, blasting AC/DC and sighing heavily.

 

It was one of those days. It was one of those worlds.

 

Forty more Iraqi civilians were killed in various bombings and

insurgent attacks, adding to a pile of bodies about as high as the

temple of Allah. Baghdad is reportedly a garbage-filled cesspool --

raw sewage in the streets, basic services almost nonexistent, food

rotting, citizens unsure where the next bomb will go off. Senator

Lloyd Bentsen died at 85, thus possibly confusing many people who

thought the headline referred to Lloyd Bridges, who died eight years

ago, a confusion that might or might not have reminded some of the

movie " Airplane, " which might have, despite all the death and

destruction, induced a grin.

 

It was bleak. It was gruesome. It was ugly and depressing and the

truth is, it's displays of horror and human misery exactly like this

that make you wince and cringe and inject MDMA into your heart and

want to turn it all off. For good.

 

Yet some days, it is merely the state of the news, it is just what

comes across the wires and as media people we are required by some

sort of universal mandate o' bleakdom to put it in front of your

eyeballs, which in turn makes it seem like this sort of thing is

happening in every nook and cranny of the planet at all times without

pause. Ironically, however, were we to choose not to present the hell

as it unfolds, we'd be accused of ignoring the death and mayhem and

" serious " news in favor of thin tabloid-y stories about the Brangelina

baby and " The Da Vinci Code " and the terribly annoying winner of

" American Idol. "

 

It is, you must know, a most unique conundrum. And it has no easy answer.

 

Regardless, people often ask: " What are all these bleeding and

scowling headlines trying to tell me? Is there really murder on every

corner and corruption in every CEO's soul? What the hell am I supposed

to do with this all the bleak and wretched information pumped forth by

major media every minute of every day? "

 

Sometimes these are the only questions we're allowed to ask. Am I

merely to wallow in just how much life is nasty, brutish and

hilariously short? Am I never to go outside lest I be attacked by

angry pigeons with nail guns and rabid bird flu? Is my car being

broken into and are rabid cancer cells attacking my colon as I read

this very sentence? Because, Christ on a pogo stick, some days it sure

seems like it.

 

This is what you must know: Media is a bizarre and harrowing but

somehow weirdly delicious mistress. On the one hand, it is mandatory

and beneficial in innumerable ways, and the basic rule goes that if

you don't watch the news or read at least one major paper or skim

through some assortment of news blogs and check in with the world on a

semiregular basis, well, it can be argued that you are doing a

terrifically lousy job at being an informed human and you have little

right to pule and bitch because willful ignorance is just as bad as,

well, plain ol' stupidity.

 

On the other hand, excessive immersion in this swirling blood-drenched

hyperbolic world of goofily inflated mayhem will only leave you deeply

unsatisfied and angry and potentially alcoholic, not to mention

nauseated and mistrustful of all mankind everywhere. Except maybe

Tibetans. And the Kurds. Man have they been screwed.

 

But here's the thing: The wise ones tell us that whatever you focus

on, expands. Wherever you direct you attention and wherever you put

your energy and your heart and your concern, that thing will suddenly

seem bigger and more important and potentially all-consuming. Is your

attention excessively on death and corruption at the expense of

laughter and perspective? That is your reality. Is it all about perky

happy bunnies and tofu sunsets at the expense of harsher realities?

This is your choice.

 

You cannot always choose what sort of slings and arrows the world

hurls at your heart, nor should you try to avoid them all in some

weeping lament at the state of it all. But no matter the blood and no

matter the mayhem and no matter the hyperbole, you can always choose

how you'll respond.

 

Do you lash out? Seek revenge? Hunker down and don your karmic armor

and seethe quietly? Or do you take the opportunity for deeper personal

examination? Do you see bleak tales and wonder what you can do and how

you can illuminate and who you can lick in your life to contradict and

counter and deflect that black energy? Maybe this is the only way.

 

Because lo and behold, check out the top stories on our site one week

later, the tales getting the most visits from goodly readers like you:

A big new study seems to prove that smoking marijuana -- even lots of

it -- doesn't cause cancer at all and might even alleviate it. Also,

the very strange tale of the alien face appearing in the gizzard of,

well, a duck. With pictures.

 

And there you have it. Never-ending reminders that the universe is

just as nasty and wry and mischievous a trickster as ever. All you

gotta do is make the choice to see it.