Boston, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #219 | @MDWorld

April 18, 2013 Arthur Tebbel 4 Comments

I had something else this week.  It was about jet lag and income taxes.  I liked it and was pretty happy to get it up as a return to Pop Art after my unintentional break for my Japan trip.  Then some (asshole or group of assholes) blew up the Boston Marathon and suddenly my shit doesn’t seem even a little important.

 

 

 

I can’t claim to have some sort of great relationship to the city or anything.  I think I’ve been twice but I could easily be combining a couple trips in to one if it turns out this number isn’t right.  I’ve even shit talked the city a fair amount in that stupid provincial way people conduct themselves in the Northeast.  Case in point, I haven’t watched a baseball game in five years but up until Monday I could have easily told you that the most annoying fans in the world were Red Sox fans.  I acknowledge that is totally fucked up.  I never even liked the Yankees.  It’s just some irrational crap, the weird sociological umbilical cord from when the town over the hill would come over and conquer your town.

We all need to be over that now.  We need to have nothing but love for these human beings who are in pain.  Who are hurt or have watched their loved ones get hurt.  Who have had the innocence of a simple holiday taken from them.  I had a couple pangs yesterday of “not as bad as 9/11” and fuck that.  It’s exactly as bad because there are people who will never be the same.  Kids will see this on the news and realize the depth of human depravity in a way they never did before the exact same way people did on 9/11.  It can’t be measured in body counts or property damage but in psychic toil and I can’t think of many things that rank as high as an explosion at the finish line of a marathon on a public holiday.  It sounds like a plot point in an action movie.

The last bit of dysfunction I wish I could purge from myself is the need to know who did this.  I want to know who they are, I want to know what they thought this would accomplish, and I want to know if there are others out there like them.  This is information I probably don’t need and might be happier without.  No matter what reason eventually comes out of this the actual reason will be that a crazy person or group of crazy people did this.    They did it for reasons that won’t make a lick of sense to any normal person and, unfortunately, there will always be violent crazy people out there.  There’s nothing we can do to keep them from developing and there’s really nothing we can do to stop them from hurting people.  We just don’t live in that kind of world and frankly I’m not sure I would want to go to the public events where they check every person to see if they have a bomb because I don’t like waiting in long lines.

I could probably keep talking about this but I just heard a bunch of sirens and I need to turn on the news to make sure LA isn’t exploding.  Stay safe everyone.