And I can enjoy where I am, because there is warmth in the darkness. But what worries me is that I cannot remember my dreams, how apt. My back and right knee are extremely sore today. All I want to do is sit here and do nothing.
In light of the horrible Boston bombing that I wrote about yesterday, I was reading that America has just gone absolutely nuts. The Saudi national that was viewed as a person of interest was apparently tackled by a concerned citizen, even though the Saudi was injured. This resulted in the Saudi being placed in police guard in the hospital and having his apartment searched. Apparently he is cooperating with the authorities and it's been revealed that he's no longer a suspect. Gee, what a relief! Then I was reading that two arabic speakers (who weren't traveling together) were boarding a flight to Chicago, which apparently scared a bunch of marathon runners and in they re-screened all luggage and passengers, and when they couldn't find anything, they just kicked the two arabic speakers off the flight to appease the rest of the travelers. What bullshit. Great profiling by the scared shitless passengers and the gutless airline. See, this is the problem - hatred and fear of what you don't understand. This perpetuation in the media, and by the government (to present certain people as scapegoats), is what makes people angry - that's what gets you blown up. Reactions like this dull my sympathy, which is horrible, considering an innocent child died, among others, as well as hundreds of people being maimed brutally. Then of course there's the news of a bombing in Iraq which killed 50 people, and a massive earthquake in Iran, but nobody gives a shit, and the media will just give a throwaway line about it. When you have so much footage of the bombing that can be replayed on tv in excruciating slow motion over and over again, and given that the victims look like us and speak our language, the media will convince you that the Boston tragedy outweighs everything else, and that's not right. A death is a death and it's not right.
What I don't like is this idea that muslims who are silent about terrorist attacks are inherently supporting them. What a load of crap. I think by that measure, anyone who isn't out there marching the streets every goddamned day for anti-war demonstrations, then you inherently support the current unjust wars.
John Oliver of the Daily Show (some may recall him as the professor from Community who helped Jeff Winger enrol at Greendale College) recently remarked that he was shocked at how comfortable Australians were with their casual racism. This of course caused an uproar here, but the fact is that it's true. We are seeing a marked increase in people on public transport conducting racist abuse at people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. From out of nowhere it has just exploded into a 'thing' where it's basically an epidemic now! Going back to Oliver's comments, he mentioned that a lot of people told him that they didn't like those 'lebbos' (referring to lebanese people), and he thought it was comical how Australian racism is so specific. It's not that they hate arabs, they hate a specific group of them! It's nonsensical and hilarious if it didn't have real ramifications for people. How misinformed - Oliver deserves no criticism for speaking the truth.
I've been reading (hahaha, a hell of a lot it seems) that job applicants who have foreign sounding names are likely to not get a callback, regardless of how well qualified they are. They did a test where a foreign named person and a person with a 'regular' name submitted the same resume, and the person with the regular name always got the callback. How discriminatory, why is this? Are people scared of foreigners? Can they not pronounce the names? That's just utterly infuriating. With hiring practices like that, you will never get the best person for a role. But what do you expect?
Why the hell am I looking up specs for a computer that is just way too expensive and overpowered?! I could afford it though... Nah, not interested. Nice to keep me occupied though.
Let's call it for one day. Take care.
Joaquin out.
