manic monday

this morning i woke up to more rain showers, as was expected.

drove to work and spent the day obsessively reading news reports on the tragedy at virginia tech. i have this weird addiction to newsfeeds, particularly when something horrible happens.

this really was horrible. the first report with one dead and 7 shot, from the morning, was sad enough. being out of college for only 2 years, this setting and location is so close to what i know. the reality of it makes it scarier.

today is ending with 33 people dead including the gunman. the biggest mass shooting in us history. completely tragic.

when reading the same news report for the third or fourth time today, it hit me though- 33 people died, not a small number at all. but compared to the number dying everysingleday in iraq and elsewhere in the world its only a small sample. those people in the middle east were also just going about there business - schools, cafes, parliament- when they get killed by bombs and guns and suicide attacks. nyt reports that 34 people died in baghdad on sunday. thats one city and one day alone. these things happen everyday.

i think the repetitiveness and frequency of foreign casualties has caused me to not notice as much. i see the headlines everyday, but they never stick out. it's nothing "out of the ordinary", per se. i grew up with outkast singing 'bombs over baghdad' and for much of my life its just song lyrics and stories from far away. then things like this happen. peoples faces that could be pulled from any street in america and classic college campus scenes i recognize being shown with armed men racing across and injured people being carried away somehow help me to grasp the horrors overseas much clearer. 33 american college students and faculty, people just like me, died today. but also those 34 people that died in iraq on sunday were also like me, because they were human. every death is horrible and tragic. it's ridiculous that it takes events like today to remind me of the relative tragedy near and far every day. reminds me that i am just an ignorant kid living in the american bubble even though i try not to be. i'll just have to have to work harder. can't keep waiting on the world to change.