Everything is dark and disturbing and sad
Seems like everything I've heard today has been really dark and disturbing. It started with the radio. I love love love This American Life. It's a show on NPR where they tell three stories all along the same theme. I listened between doing shopping and lunch, so I missed a few bits of it. The theme of the week was pets.
The first story bothered me a hell of a lot. David Sedaris told a "funny" story about how many pets his family had and how they kept dying. He told how his mother put a puppy in an oven to keep it warm after it "died" (turned out it wasn't dead). In a 150 degree oven. Story ("joke") after story about how all these animals of his died, all told in a way that was supposed to be "funny". It made me want to cry or throw up.
Then I went into a store and so missed the middle story (though looking at the website, it did look to be a lighter one). I also missed the first minute or two of the final story, which turned out to be a big issue. The story was about a man and his mentally ill brother. The two lived together because the brother couldn't live alone. Somehow the brother got an armadillo as a pet. The story told about how he took care of the animal (badly, scaring it on purpose and crap). The story went on, the brother died because he ran out naked in traffic. The healthy brother found the armadillo and took it into his own home. Then he described, in great detail, how he would hold the armadillo under water for minutes at a time, closer and closer to drowning it and in detail how it fought to get up to the air, how it reacted when he pulled it out of the tub. I wanted to throw up. In the end, the host mentioned it was a fictional story. At first I was relieved (I was so sick at the thought of someone doing that -- it was written in such detail I thought it had to be real, first hand experience). But then I got mad. Even fictional, the story made me feel so bad. So angry and hurt and sick and mad. Never before have I wanted to write an author to tell him he shouldn't have written about something. (Which I suppose means it was well-written, that it affected me that much. Still.)
If you want to hear the whole This American Life show, click here The armadillo story is Resurrection, the third one. I can't recommend it.
Then I got home and heard this song. I liked it a lot. I suggest listening to this version first, with just the lyrics and not the official video:
It's a sad but beautiful song with interesting lyrics. Then I watched the official video. Warning for hate crimes:
Oh my god, I could barely watch that! D: Knowing that that sort of thing happens in real life, that it happens now... gah. It's powerful, I think it's worth watching, but man was it sad and hard to watch.
After all that, I think we need a teddy bear to hug. This might not be the bear we're looking for:
The first story bothered me a hell of a lot. David Sedaris told a "funny" story about how many pets his family had and how they kept dying. He told how his mother put a puppy in an oven to keep it warm after it "died" (turned out it wasn't dead). In a 150 degree oven. Story ("joke") after story about how all these animals of his died, all told in a way that was supposed to be "funny". It made me want to cry or throw up.
Then I went into a store and so missed the middle story (though looking at the website, it did look to be a lighter one). I also missed the first minute or two of the final story, which turned out to be a big issue. The story was about a man and his mentally ill brother. The two lived together because the brother couldn't live alone. Somehow the brother got an armadillo as a pet. The story told about how he took care of the animal (badly, scaring it on purpose and crap). The story went on, the brother died because he ran out naked in traffic. The healthy brother found the armadillo and took it into his own home. Then he described, in great detail, how he would hold the armadillo under water for minutes at a time, closer and closer to drowning it and in detail how it fought to get up to the air, how it reacted when he pulled it out of the tub. I wanted to throw up. In the end, the host mentioned it was a fictional story. At first I was relieved (I was so sick at the thought of someone doing that -- it was written in such detail I thought it had to be real, first hand experience). But then I got mad. Even fictional, the story made me feel so bad. So angry and hurt and sick and mad. Never before have I wanted to write an author to tell him he shouldn't have written about something. (Which I suppose means it was well-written, that it affected me that much. Still.)
If you want to hear the whole This American Life show, click here The armadillo story is Resurrection, the third one. I can't recommend it.
Then I got home and heard this song. I liked it a lot. I suggest listening to this version first, with just the lyrics and not the official video:
Click to viewIt's a sad but beautiful song with interesting lyrics. Then I watched the official video. Warning for hate crimes:
Oh my god, I could barely watch that! D: Knowing that that sort of thing happens in real life, that it happens now... gah. It's powerful, I think it's worth watching, but man was it sad and hard to watch.
After all that, I think we need a teddy bear to hug. This might not be the bear we're looking for: