Mood:
chillin'Ok, let's get started with a few definitions.
In our "rhetoric rules all" society, we like to paint every bad situation as if it were the end of the world... right?
Disaster has come to mean everything from two hurricanes soggying up the same swath of Florida down to a flooded out basement due to a broken water main.
Well folks, I'm here to tell you, the water main thing might just have messed up your weekend and ruined whatever notions of nastalgia you kept hidden away in your basement, but guess what... what you have on your hands in that case is a genuine, dyed in the wool personal tragedy.
The Hurricanes, on the other hand, are excellent examples of true disaster. Either one of them qualify on their own. Throw them both in the pot, turn up the heat, and what we have on our hands is a boiling case of coastal state soup!
So, in our defining moment here, let us ensure a grasp of the difference and diversity in our quadrangle of quandary... Personal Tragedy, Disaster, War, and Other Things that Just Plain Suck!
For an incident to reach disaster status is an impressive accomplishment. No matter how much trial and/or tribulation the incident inflicts, if it can be managed, put up with (or dare I say, enjoyed) by the assets and inhabitants of the infrastructure in place, it is not a disaster.
If the Israelites of old happened to have liked frogs or considered their newly acquired ribbon of crimson an aesthetically pleasing break in the desert landscape, the plagues themselves would not have been disasters.
No, for an indicent to reach disaster proportions it must inspire the open mouthed awe of even the most jaded of witnesses.
Personal Tragedy, hoever, lives its life much the same as the feather or welterweight boxing champ. It works very hard to be every bit as bad as the disaster, but of course, it will always be the heavyweight champ who gets the ink.
In boxing and things that just plain suck, the result is the same.
Let that be part of what guides you in your categorization of an event. Disasters luckily occur with far less frequency than tragedies (This, by the way, should be considered a good thing). Not only are they of much less frequency, they involve less of the doom, death and destruction that we would expect from anything dubbed, Disaster.
If you have never witnessed a thriving city reduced to a tent city, you haven't seen nature at her most inhumane.
If your city has never played host to Our Friend, consider this a good thing. Parking lots, city parks, vacant buildings and vacant lots are magically changed into open air warehouses and campgrounds.
Bodies of water become washers of bodies. Video games, kitchen appliances, blow dryers and electric shavers pretty much become dead weight. Basically anything with a plug becomes (in the immortal words of my dad) "Not worth a plug nickel!" Necessities become luxuries as luxuries become junk.
So, armed with a sure knowledge of what differentiates the quirks of our quadrangle; Accident, Disaster, War and other things that just plain suck; Let us ride boldly, loudly and entirely too obnoxiously into the sunset of Personal Tragedy, Disaster, War, and Other Things that Just Plain Suck!!!
Posted by iftgihth
at 11:32 CST
mischievious