October 13, 2010
ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT CHILEAN MINERS AND HIS NAME IS ME Where were you on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010? This is a question that people will be asking for the entirety of October 13th and possibly deep into the weekend. Millions of people across the world were glued to their television sets and twitter-machines, watching and blogging and re-bogging and crying and hugging and re-crying and re-hugging about a miraculous thing to come out of Chile: the first of the 33 rescued miners. Where were YOU on Tuesday, October 12th? Were you witnessing a miracle of God, Man & Machine, working together for seemingly the first time in this topsy-turvy world where it seems nobody can agree on anything but at least for one night FOR ONE NIGHT we can all come together as a planet and hope these little Chilean guys emerge from months of what can only be described as hell into bright lights of salvation? I was not. And apparently, according to an informal pole taken in my office, that makes me a jerk. So, first off, by way of an excuse, baseball was on. And unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past three months (Oops!), you probably know that the Texas Rangers were on the verge of winning their first post-season series in their 50 years as a franchise. And by the way, it was a good fucking game. And they won. And I don’t even particularly like the Texas Rangers, but you got to respect good baseball. And I wake up this morning, and at I first assume that there is a typo on the front page of the New York Post, as it read “Miner Miracle”. “Surely, Mr Murdoch made a mistake,” I thought, “he is referring to the big Texas Rangers win last night and Cliff Lee’s dominate performance, which is certainly not a MAJOR miracle, so at least they’re being up front.” But alas, it was not a typo. It was a pun. A terrible terrible pun. I preferred yesterdays pun about that insane man running for governor of New York who thinks that gays and lesbians are brainwashing Americas youth (presumably as a pyramid scheme to sell more rainbow flags) that read “Cuomo-Phobe”. Even though Andrew Cuomo isn’t the one who made the comment, I still kind of saw what they were going for. But “Miner Miracle”? In the New York Post? Since when do we give a shit about what’s going on in Chile? Since when does what’s going on in Chile effect my day? Yesterday a Federal Judge effectively ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a majority of Fed Chiefs now favor buying up billions of dollars of treasury bonds, for God sakes people, Brett Farve sent naked pictures to a chesty reporter! Does NOBODY care about Brett Farve’s penis anymore? What in God’s name is happening here? Now, I hate a celebrity scandal as much as the next guy. Tiger Woods wants to strangle some woman while he does her in the butt? So does my Dad but you don’t see me tweeting about it. But the thing about celebrity scandal is that it’s reliable. Every month there’s someone else fucking, trying to be fucking, or being fucked by somebody they are not supposed to. And the New York Post makes a weeks worth of puns on it. It’s as reliable as my morning coffee or a half hour after my morning coffee when I have my post-morning-coffee-poop/game-of-brick-breaker. But to put a couple of Chilean people on the cover of the New York Post when there is the all-American combo of post-season baseball and Brett Farve’s penis to revel at? With that kind of one-two punch, it would be reasonable to assume that somewhere on page seven there’s a a corner of a page that says “Oh By The Way, Remember When Those Chilean Guys Were Trapped In A Coal Mine? Well They’re Fine.” But no. So let’s put this thing in perspective. 33 people die under horrible hellish conditions pretty much every hour. There are about a dozen wars going on right now as we speak. A four year old girl just had her limbs hacked off while being gang raped… NOW. And NOW. And NOW again. It’s enough to make you want to rip our eyes out. Or you can watch Baseball. Because in baseball, nobody’s life is on the line. The height of drama is “is this multimillionaire going to throw a little ball better than this multimillionaire can hit it?” It’s escapism, but it isn’t delusional. I care about Brett Farve’s penis because if I cared about something substantial, I’d want to rip my eyeballs out. (That’s not a knock at the substance of Brett Farve’s penis by the way. I’m sure it’s very nice.) But delusional is caring about the rescue of 33 random dudes who lived in a cave for a few months, and associating their rescue with some greater good - in miracles either engineered or divine - and tweeting your little peckers off about it. If the accident that initially caused them to get trapped in that cave had killed them instead of trapped them, guess what kind of news coverage that would have gotten? Page Seven. Little blurb in the corner. “Random Dudes Die In Cave. No One Cares.” Number of tweets? Zero. Maybe a dead guy’s brother- “My Bro Died In Cave. Sux.” The New York Times today did a piece about the miners that began, “It sounds cliche to say that something is a social media phenomenon.” They really should have stopped right there. But the point is clear: You can’t blame the news, people care about this shit. So for the next few days, but more likely hours, you’ll hear a lot of people saying a lot of asinine things about miracles, about miners, about Chile, about seclusion, redemption, salvation. But me, personally, I can’t wait for tomorrow, when the cover of the New York Post is Brett Farve and a dick-pun, and people are talking about baseball. Because that’s why my grandparents chose to come to here. And not, say, Chile.

ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT CHILEAN MINERS

AND HIS NAME IS ME

Where were you on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010? This is a question that people will be asking for the entirety of October 13th and possibly deep into the weekend. Millions of people across the world were glued to their television sets and twitter-machines, watching and blogging and re-bogging and crying and hugging and re-crying and re-hugging about a miraculous thing to come out of Chile: the first of the 33 rescued miners.

Where were YOU on Tuesday, October 12th? Were you witnessing a miracle of God, Man & Machine, working together for seemingly the first time in this topsy-turvy world where it seems nobody can agree on anything but at least for one night FOR ONE NIGHT we can all come together as a planet and hope these little Chilean guys emerge from months of what can only be described as hell into bright lights of salvation?

I was not. And apparently, according to an informal pole taken in my office, that makes me a jerk.

So, first off, by way of an excuse, baseball was on. And unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past three months (Oops!), you probably know that the Texas Rangers were on the verge of winning their first post-season series in their 50 years as a franchise. And by the way, it was a good fucking game. And they won. And I don’t even particularly like the Texas Rangers, but you got to respect good baseball. And I wake up this morning, and at I first assume that there is a typo on the front page of the New York Post, as it read “Miner Miracle”.

“Surely, Mr Murdoch made a mistake,” I thought, “he is referring to the big Texas Rangers win last night and Cliff Lee’s dominate performance, which is certainly not a MAJOR miracle, so at least they’re being up front.”

But alas, it was not a typo. It was a pun. A terrible terrible pun. I preferred yesterdays pun about that insane man running for governor of New York who thinks that gays and lesbians are brainwashing Americas youth (presumably as a pyramid scheme to sell more rainbow flags) that read “Cuomo-Phobe”. Even though Andrew Cuomo isn’t the one who made the comment, I still kind of saw what they were going for.

But “Miner Miracle”? In the New York Post? Since when do we give a shit about what’s going on in Chile? Since when does what’s going on in Chile effect my day? Yesterday a Federal Judge effectively ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a majority of Fed Chiefs now favor buying up billions of dollars of treasury bonds, for God sakes people, Brett Farve sent naked pictures to a chesty reporter! Does NOBODY care about Brett Farve’s penis anymore? What in God’s name is happening here?

Now, I hate a celebrity scandal as much as the next guy. Tiger Woods wants to strangle some woman while he does her in the butt? So does my Dad but you don’t see me tweeting about it. But the thing about celebrity scandal is that it’s reliable. Every month there’s someone else fucking, trying to be fucking, or being fucked by somebody they are not supposed to. And the New York Post makes a weeks worth of puns on it. It’s as reliable as my morning coffee or a half hour after my morning coffee when I have my post-morning-coffee-poop/game-of-brick-breaker.

But to put a couple of Chilean people on the cover of the New York Post when there is the all-American combo of post-season baseball and Brett Farve’s penis to revel at? With that kind of one-two punch, it would be reasonable to assume that somewhere on page seven there’s a a corner of a page that says “Oh By The Way, Remember When Those Chilean Guys Were Trapped In A Coal Mine? Well They’re Fine.”

But no. So let’s put this thing in perspective.

33 people die under horrible hellish conditions pretty much every hour. There are about a dozen wars going on right now as we speak. A four year old girl just had her limbs hacked off while being gang raped… NOW. And NOW. And NOW again. It’s enough to make you want to rip our eyes out. Or you can watch Baseball.

Because in baseball, nobody’s life is on the line. The height of drama is “is this multimillionaire going to throw a little ball better than this multimillionaire can hit it?” It’s escapism, but it isn’t delusional. I care about Brett Farve’s penis because if I cared about something substantial, I’d want to rip my eyeballs out. (That’s not a knock at the substance of Brett Farve’s penis by the way. I’m sure it’s very nice.)

But delusional is caring about the rescue of 33 random dudes who lived in a cave for a few months, and associating their rescue with some greater good - in miracles either engineered or divine - and tweeting your little peckers off about it. If the accident that initially caused them to get trapped in that cave had killed them instead of trapped them, guess what kind of news coverage that would have gotten? Page Seven. Little blurb in the corner. “Random Dudes Die In Cave. No One Cares.”

Number of tweets? Zero. Maybe a dead guy’s brother- “My Bro Died In Cave. Sux.”

The New York Times today did a piece about the miners that began, “It sounds cliche to say that something is a social media phenomenon.” They really should have stopped right there. But the point is clear: You can’t blame the news, people care about this shit. So for the next few days, but more likely hours, you’ll hear a lot of people saying a lot of asinine things about miracles, about miners, about Chile, about seclusion, redemption, salvation.

But me, personally, I can’t wait for tomorrow, when the cover of the New York Post is Brett Farve and a dick-pun, and people are talking about baseball. Because that’s why my grandparents chose to come to here. And not, say, Chile.

3:46pm  |   URL: http://todayinpictures.tumblr.com/post/1307483628/one-person-in-the-world-does-not-give-a-shit-about
Comments (View)
blog comments powered by Disqus