Myopia, Thy Name is America

Or, why I really hate the American new service.

Greetings from the Imperial Snowwoman. I am still chilled to the bone from shoveling out of Snowmageddon '11.  Idiot cleared the front walk & sidewalk. I cleared the driveway, all the way to the street, including the 2 feet of frozen plow spill.  Yep, the upper body strength is still good, but for the first time in my life i understand why people live in Florida & southern Cali. Either that, or i have to go cougar & trade great cooking, good massages, & hot sex for shoveling services. Nah, better to move. ;-)

Of course, all the local news could talk about was Snowmageddon. I mean, it's New England, it's January, WHAT IS SO FUCKING SHOCKING ABOUT TWO FEET OF SNOW?!?! Christ on a crutch, people, you act like this came out of nowhere!

You know what came out of nowhere? The awful flood in Australia. An area the size of Texas was under water yesterday, 100,000 people unaccounted for, and do you think these idiots mentioned  word about it? Half the newscast was given over to talking about the snow, and roughly 2 minutes of the 20 was useful information. I shit you not. More time was given to their pundit and his spin-o-meter yapping about Alaska Barbie than to Mr. O and his speech from Tucson.

Not a mumblin' word about the rest of the world.

THIS is not a good thing, folks. This is one of the big issues i have with my fellow Americans these days-our isolationist POV on the world. It's got to stop. Yesterday (well, Monday, but as I haven't been to sleep yet, it's still Tuesday to me) was the 1 year anniversary of the horrible Haitian earthquake. I got dozens of updates about it; i got three about the current tragedy in Australia.

Two of them from comedians. Yeah, Eddie ifft and Jim Jefferies.

Oh, and Yahoo had something about it on the splash screen when i signed in to IM.

That's it.

Now, i feel a greater affinity for Australia than i do Haiti. Sorry, but there it is. I have no intention of ever visiting Haiti (honestly, I don't want to do the Carribean at all-I think white folks have exploited the fuck out of the people there & don't have any need to be a part of it). Australia... man, that is a place I would LOVE to check out. Also, being of both Irish & English descent & coming from a long line of hellraisers & footloose types, there's probably a few long lost distant cousins there. (Not that I'd ever go looking for them. Families split up for reasons, some of them sensible.)

OK, I'm rambling. The point... the point is that a horrible disaster has hit a country that has been an ally of ours for a long time. The point is that people are homeless, suffering, & in need of our help. I'm blogging from my phone, so I can't pull up the donation URLs & cut & paste them, BUT if you pop on to Jim Jefferies's or Eddie Ifft's Twitter feeds or Jim's Facebook, the links to donate are there. For my friends in Cali, Jim will be donating the proceeds from one of his gigs at the end of the month, so that's a chance to help & be bloody well entertained.

My heart goes out to Queensland.