Friday, December 08, 2006

Friday Existentialism at Casa WULAD

So as I woke up this morning, I could hear the morning newspeople gabbing about the recently deceased James Kim, and how he was only a few miles from a lodge that could've saved his life but he took a wrong turn, and it's possible he only died a few hours before they found him, and so on, listing all the little ways that bad luck conspired to have this story end in tragedy: "And if he'd only turned here instead of here..." Duh, James Kim! seemed to be the gist, whether they were intending it or not.

(There was even the required misuse of the word "ironic," which reporters are so fond of—"It's ironic that Kim was probably no further than a mile away when his family was rescued" or something—no, you idiots, it would be ironic if the rescue helicopter had landed on him and killed him. Anyway...)

Like everybody else in the Bay Area, I had been sucked into the family's story, probably because their pictures were so damn cute, and because I had gone from thinking "Boy, it's sad that they're probably not going to make it," to "Boy, that's amazing they made it," to "Boy, that's sad he's probably not going to make it." I remember having an especially unpleasant feeling when I saw friends of the family toasting the Mom and kids' rescue with champagne, since the odds were already pretty bad for Mr. Kim at that point.

Anyway the newscasters went on to something else, and as C-baby got ready to leave and I got ready to get out of bed, I said, "This is just another example of how God is an asshole," and she replied, "God isn't an asshole. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because He doesn't exist," she said.

I love that chick.