Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Nuclear Meltdowns

Everybody hear about everything going on in Japan?  You didn't?  What rock were you living under for the last week?  Yeah, apparently there was some kind of unmitigated disaster consisting of one of the largest recorded earthquakes of all time, an enormous wall of water over four stories high, and a series of nuclear reactors failing in reponse to the unprecedented shitshow that they had just been subjected to.   Thousands dead, millions homeless, untold of environmental consequences. 

This is the shit bad movies are made of.  This is like Deep Impact rolled up with The Day After Tomorrow, albeit on a smaller scale.  By the way, does this officially put Japan into first place on the list of places where ridiculous disasters happen?  Talk about your bad karma: the only country to have combat fatalities due to a nuclear detonation, and now this. 

But  the most interesting aspect of this whole shebang?  The virtually zero effect that it has had on the rest of the world, specifically the United States.  Now, I know that ultimately there will be fallout.  People will lose money in foreign investments due to crashing Japanese stocks.  The car industry is likely going to have an enormous shake up (although I'm having a hard time seeing how this can't benefit American automakers.)  But meanwhile, season 57 of Survivor is still on tv.  The NFL owners and players are still having a kindergarten-esque slap fight over how to split up the truly obscene amounts of money they have at their disposal.  And Charlie Sheen is still a folk hero cum douche rocket. 

You know that feeling where you can be simultaneously amazed and disgusted at the same time?  That's how I feel now.  Because on the one hand it is damn impressive that an event of this magnitude can occur and not ruffel a hair on the head of roughly 96% of the world's population.  On the other, it is ghastly.  Does this speak to mankind's resiliency, or our callousness?

The Ground Rules

The purpose of this blog is for me to discuss politics, entertainment, technology, sports, current events, my favorite brand of shaving cream, and anything else that happens to tickle my fancy the moment I work up the necessary motivation to sit down and write something.  The pretentiousness of writing this blog to a current audience of none does not escape me. However, let me make something perfectly clear to you shapeless phantoms out there, all of you faceless critics yet to come: I. Do. Not. Care.  
That is to say I expect individuals will have their own opinions about various topics I may cover.  I will even go so far as to express my respect for those deviant perspectives and encourage further discussion.  But I will not pander and I reserve the right to tell you to go to hell. 
Now that the dreary formalities have been dealt with, let's move on to the fun stuff.