sick again

Sick again. Cold-flu thing. The holidays should take place in warm months, when people are more likely to socialize outdoors, rather than indoors, with closed windows and hot, dry air . . .

On the other hand, how can I complain in light of reports of the death toll from the earthquake/tsunami? It's like reading science fiction. Tens of thousands dead in what amounts to little more than an instant. A part of me simply can't digest it, as if I'd been asked to digest the claim that 1 + 1 = 3. The horrific images from Fallujah seem more tangible, somehow, perhaps because that devastation results from a relatively slow, man-made (and preventable) process. And as I type these words, I feel like something of a monster. What a perversely and unjustly privileged position I must be in order to be able to leisurely contemplate why one kind of mass death seems real and another doesn't . . .